I'm not sure how effective the clotting agents are. I was watching a cooking show and one of the chefs chopped off the tip of her finger. They put a powder on it, presumably a clotting agent, and it still squirted. Eventually they resorted to bandaging and the show continued.
Perhaps it was not a clotting agent (or a GOOD clotting agent), or perhaps fingertips don't have enough surface area for it to work well.
Of course, just because it was on TV, even a 'reality' show, does not mean it was a reliable source of information...
Fingertips are tough cuz the shape makes it hard to get good pressure on the wound, and the injury is often an avulsion rather than a laceration-a piece is missing, and lots of little vessels are bleeding. There is a product called tubegauze that permits good pressure and an esthetically pleasing finger dressing. Sometimes it is little too effective, and the resultant pressure can cause damage to healthy tissue. The most elegant solution to big vessel bleeding is to reach in with a hemostat-that little locking forcep that emt's and nurses clip to their uniforms- to reach in and clamp the vessel. That's how the device got its name hemo/blood+ stasis/halt= hemostat. Usually followed by tying off the vessel with a suture. Usual disclaimers: don't try this at home, use only those techniques for which you have training...
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