A Simple Lifesaver for Hemorrhagic Shock or Cardiac Arrest

A young man was brought to the emergency room of Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem in traumatic cardiac arrest after shrapnel tore his inferior vena cava, the big vein in the middle of the belly. The young trauma surgeon opened the young man’s chest to start internal cardiac massage.

At the same time, he instructed his team to use HemaShock, which they’d learned about when treating soldiers during army reserve duty.

Applied in emergency cases of dangerously low systolic blood pressure caused by hemorrhagic shock or cardiac arrest, this unique exsanguination tourniquet squeezes all the blood from the patient’s arms or legs and blocks its reentry to the limb.

This brings the patient’s own blood, with all its clotting factors and intact oxygen-carrying capacity, into the core organs. There’s no need to wait for a blood transfusion, and the heart doesn’t have to pump blood all the way to the limbs.

“Lo and behold, the patient’s heart started beating again. They were then able to operate and repair the vena cava,” relates Dr. Noam Gavriely, founder and chief medical officer of OHK Medical Devices, the Israel-based parent company that developed HemaShock and other products.

Keep reading at israel21c.org.

OHK Medical Devices Founder and Chief Medical Officer Noam Gavriely is a Technion alumnus.