Pressure Clamp Stops Hemorrhages on the Spot

The iTClamp Hemorrhage Control System is designed to save lives in prehospital trauma care environments, focusing on the control of massive hemorrhage—a leading cause of death in traumatic injury—by controlling critical bleeding in seconds. The iTClamp seals the edges of a wound closed to create a temporary pool of blood under pressure, which forms a stable clot that mitigates further blood loss until the wound can be surgically repaired. The five cm long device, which resembles a hair clip, can be applied in a matter of seconds, and can be used by basically anyone with minimal training.

The sterile, plastic clamp has curved needles along the “jaws” of the device; in a trauma situation, the responder clamps the device along the wound. The curved needles and the shape of the ITClamp draw the wound up into the device and anchor it with even pressure, allowing the blood underneath to create a clot around the wound and stop the bleeding until the victim receives further medical attention; bigger wounds take more devices. The iTClamp Hemorrhage Control System is a product of iTraumaCare (San Antonio, TX, USA), and has received the European Union CE marking of Approval.

“I was inspired by the difficult conditions army medics work under; I saw the tools they had were inadequate to treat really simple problems, like bleeding,” said iTClamp developer Dennis Filips, MD, CEO of iTraumaCare, who served for 20 years as a US military trauma surgeon. “If you can get an injured person to the hospital, there’s a 98% chance they’ll survive. The big gap is the time it takes to get from the scene of the injury to the hospital.”

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