Expanding foam to stop internal bleeding

Ever do that high school science experiment where you mix hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, and yeast and get this rapidly expanding foam that overflows whatever container you started with? I think the experiment is often called Elephant's Toothpaste.

Interesting wound care method being developed by DARPA--expanding foam to stop internal bleeding. I read about it here. Blunt force trauma or high velocity penetrating injury can cause massive internal bleeding that you can't just apply pressure to from the outside of the body.

Enter this new foam. Inject two different chemicals into the abdominal cavity that combine to turn into rapdily expanding foam that fills every nook and cranny. It then solidifies and firmly compresses everything from the inside. I assume it doesn't hinder heart function, and sounds like bad news if anyone ever injected it into your lung by mistake, but a fascinating concept.

I can envision a future system for soldiers that has sensors that can detect blast or penetrating injuries and will automatically inject this foam if, say, it detects that the soldier is unconcious or not otherwise being rendered immediate aid. Sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but these days, science fiction can become science fact quite quickly.

A civilian version is also reportdely in the works.

Read the article, scant as it was. They seem to already use this stuff to insulate houses, more or less.

What about the heat caused by the chemical reaction? Never mentioned. Not that I am a chemist (oh Blast, help me out here) but wouldn't it cause hyperthermia?

So the foam comes out in a block. But looks like they have to gut you like a fish to get it out. Hey buddy, nice zipper there. Ouch.

Seems to me the foam can't expand too much, but as it is in the wound track it should seal it. Unless of course, the bowel or intestine has a hole in it and the foam just goes in there. C-rat cheese has nothing on this stuff.

I dunno. As to a future system that works automatically - no thank you very much. I would be in constant fear of a malfunction and would disable any automatic feature.

I think I will definitely wait a bit, for more research to be done, before trying this out.

When I first read your post here, I couldn't immediatey determine if this new treatment was coming from the medical community, or from the folks that made "Jackass, The Movie". I can envision many Darwin Awards being given out while Bubba and Joe-Bob try to perfect this new treatment. "Hey y'all, watch THIS!"

The idea of having something that a trained responder could use to stop internal bleeding in the field long enough to get the victim to definitive care is pretty awesome. I'm entirely confident that I don't want to be in test group, though.

A way to slow internal bleeding could be a very significant advance in emergency field care. i would agree that there are certainly some valid concerns, especially at this stage of development, but, let's face it,if you need this treatment, you are basicaly out of options and internal foam, risky as it might be, is probably preferable to the alternative.

On the bright side, if I am ever treated this way, I might at least finally achieve six pack abs....

Well, by "civilian application," I doubt they are working on creating a version of this foam that anyone can just find at the drug store, like picking up a can of Fix-a-flat at the auto parts store. Highly likely that only first responders would get this if product development ever gets that far.

So I think we're unlikely to see crazy videos of this on YouTube. But never say never when it comes to people's ability to do dumb things.

It's already happened, in a sense:

"Boosting Butts With Cement, Fix-A-Flat, Leads to Arrest"
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2011/...ent-fix-a-flat/

Sad, but yes, I've seen those reports, which is why Fix-a-flat came to my mind. I mean, people can buy those easily, but probably can't really buy this foam easily, if it ever comes out.

Interesting process. This stuff is in the same chemical class as "GreatStuff" foam spray. The chemical reaction that forms the finished polymer is exothermic (heat releasing) and in some cases can self-heat up to 200F. I'm assuming the overcome this problem by:
1. picking less exothermic reactant molecules (hundreds to choose from)
2. using the minimum amount of material needed. if expands x30 times, you don't need much to start with.

As for getting it out, based on several different papers I found I think the foam is NOT injected into the abdominal cavity but rather underneath the torso muscles but outside the membrane surrounding the "gut sack". This way it doesn't get intertwined with all the intestines and organs. The hardened block does need to be surgically removed, but that's probably a minor part of the surgery needed to fix the original wound.

-Blast

Don't forget infarcting any small capillary beds. I'm thinking GI system, mainly. And I'm sure the surgeons would absolutely LOVE tracking every little bit of this stuff and scraping it off.

Interesting idea? Absolutely. Hopefully they'll find a way to make it not exothermic, biodegradable, able to hold "enough" pressure but not too much pressure, and storage stable. Tall orders, but hey, that's why those folks got PhD's!

Better than bleeding to death. The sad thing is that there really is no good way to deal with this kind of injury short of surgery that may not be readily available. The best you can do in the field usually is to slow the bleeding down some and hope for the best. If an ER is ten minutes away, probably an adequate response. If it is ten hours away, the victim will likely die.

I expect to see cans of great stuff now a must carry item in the fully stocked FAK.

Blast, do you have any links? I was interested in learning more about how the foam is applied, but couldn't find anything that definitively indicated which bodily spaces the foam goes into.

I did find an academic poster that the manufacturer presented at a conference and it says the two chemicals are injected into the "intra-peritoneal" space, but that's still vague. At first blush, intra-peritoneal suggested "inside the abdominal cavity" to me, but then I remembered that you have the parietal peritoneum and the visceral peritoneum, so "intra" could mean injecting it between the two membranes, thus keeping the foam outside the abdominal cavity.

There is a video on the manufacturer's website that could be showing the foam spreading not inside the abdominal cavity, but over the area instead. Even with a video, though, it's not totally clear where the foam does or does not spread to.

According to the manufacturer, animal experiments show that the foam comes out quickly and cleanly, with very little left behind stuck to tissue.

I remember when Celox was something for first responders to dream about. Now we can buy it and similar products at Walmart.

I think you probably saw the same links I did. I did a patent search for this but I couldn't find anything with that.

Thinking back to my experiences with GreatStuff foam, it seems to prefer sticking to itself rather than anything else, especially anything wet and slippery. Maybe the foam just doesn't like to expand into every nook and cranny and prefers to stay as uni-blockish as possible.
-Blast, who made up the word "uni-blockish"

the more i read about this stuff the more it seems like it would be real easy to kill someone if you were not a highly trained medical professional..

The juxtaposition here is that if you have access to highly trained medical professionals, you probably don't need the foam in the first place. I could see potential use for it on the military battlefield possibly, but not much use in normal civilian times. But it's a new concept, so who knows where it will find use? Sounds a bit on the weird and scary side to me, but then so does using leeches on wounds, and they still do that today.

"the more i read about this stuff the more it seems like it would be real easy to kill someone if you were not a highly trained medical professional.."
Thats always been true, ever since Cain.