Blood. It is inside all of us. The problems most often arise when it is outside of us.
That is where Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle’s Stop the Bleed program comes into play.
“Bleeding is the No. 1 correctable cause of death in a trauma,” Dr. Brad Beckham, trauma surgeon at BMH-GT, told members of Columbus Rotary Club Tuesday at Events off 5th. “… In trauma, we have a concept we call the golden hour, meaning most survivable injuries, if we can get you to the hospital within an hour, that’s our best shot at saving that life. These skills are meant to extend that hour and give us more time to get that person to the hospital.”
The standardized method for stopping bleeding was established following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2013.
“We came together as a community, in the trauma world, and said, ‘Far too many people lost their lives at that event because they bled to death in the field and couldn’t make it to the hospital when they had injuries that we could have saved them from,’” Beckham said.
The result was the Stop the Bleed program, which is used worldwide. It consists of the ABCs of bleeding control: alert, bleeding, compress.
Alert means calling 911.
“If I just holler out, ‘Hey, I need someone to call 911!’ Nobody’s going to do it,” Beckham said. “Everybody’s going to look around and think somebody else is going to do it. If you decide you are taking charge of a scene, you need to either call them yourself or pick out and designate (someone).”
Bleeding refers to finding the source. It also means identifying “life-threatening” bleeding.
Compress is putting direct pressure on the wound to stop the flow. Compression works for all bleeding, but it is most necessary for injuries to the torso, where a tourniquet can’t be applied.
“In trauma, we call this the box,” Beckham said. “Outside of the brain, everything else that’s important in the body lives in the box. You really can’t do anything for this person where they are. They need to get to an emergency room or an operating room to fix that. What you can do, is if there are multiple people hurt on a scene, a car wreck or something like that, you can help by showing (first responders) this guy’s got injuries to his body. … This guy needs to go first.”
Tourniquets are devices placed above the wound and tightened to stop the bleeding.
“There’s no such thing as too tight,” Beckham said. “You keep going until the bleeding stops. … This is safe. It’s not going to cause any damage. We do encourage, if you are going to do it, use a real tourniquet, not a homemade one like a t-shirt and a stick or a belt.”
He also added that if one tourniquet doesn’t stop the bleeding, use a second one.
A Rotarian asked about self cauterizing a wound in the field, which Beckham discouraged.
“Don’t pull a Rambo and take the bullet out and put the gun powder in the wound and light it on fire. … I don’t recommend trying to cauterize anything in the field. I’ve got fancier tools that do that for me. We also don’t recommend sticking pliers or anything in to try and clamp off the bleeding. You end up doing more damage to things that you probably didn’t have to.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 44 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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