WATERTOWN, Mass. — A new bleeding control method that uses injectable foam is generating a lot of interest, in particular from the Pentagon, which hopes to use it to treat injured soldiers.
The device is being developed by Arsenal Medical, a Massachusetts-based company that announced Wednesday it has received $14 million from the U.S. Army Medical Research, in addition to the $22 million it already received from the Pentagon research arm, DARPA.
Stat reported the foam is injected through the belly button, and then expands in the abdomen, filling all the available space and compressing the wound as it hardens. The foam is manufactured so that surgeons can then easily remove it during an operation, often in one piece.
The device resembles a caulking gun filled with two liquids, which when mixed together, along with air, form the foam. The foam can expand to fill a volume up to 35 times the volume of the two liquids.
The foam is meant to stop the bleeding from internal wounds, not major external trauma, for which tourniquets are still the first choice.
The U.S. Army funding will pay for the first study on patients.
Arsenal Medical aims to start the clinical trial in 2017, administering the foam to patients in participating hospitals as they arrive to the emergency department. The study will track if the device slows blood loss and if patients arrive on the operating table in better condition.
The device could later be used by first responders and on battlefields.