Two emergency medicine physicians with wartime experience have developed a weapon against one rapidly lethal war injury.

Insurgents commonly aim just below a soldier’s body armor, where the trunk and legs join, to injure the body’s largest blood vessels, causing soldiers to bleed to death within minutes.

“There is no way to put a tourniquet around it, so soldiers are getting shot in this area and dying within several minutes,” said Dr. Richard Schwartz, Chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine in the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Health Sciences University. Police officers wearing chest protection as well as automobile accident victims can sustain similar injuries.

Efforts to externally compress the injury have been largely ineffective; the inch-round aorta runs parallel to the spine, so it can’t be approached from the back, and is several inches Continue reading →