BACKGROUND Hemorrhage remains the main cause of preventable death on the modern battlefield. As Improvised Explosive Devices in Afghanistan become increasingly powerful, more proximal limb injuries occur. Significant concerns now exist about the ability of the windlass tourniquet to control distal hemorrhage after mid-thigh application. To evaluate the efficacy of the Combat Application Tourniq...

In an investigation which has already been reported (Gilliatt and Wilson, 1954), sensation in the fingers was studied during periods of ischaemia of the arm, the ischaemia being produced artificially by inflating pneumatic cuffs to above arterial pressure round the limb. In a group of normal subjects examined after the inflation of a pneumatic tourniquet above the elbow, the mean duration of is...

BACKGROUND When capsaicin is injected intradermally, hyperalgesia develops around the injection site. The authors observed that volunteers report painful sensations in the skin remote from the injection site during tourniquet constriction of the affected extremity. METHODS Each volunteer received an intradermal injection of capsaicin on the volar forearm, followed by intermittent tourniquet c...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the association between tourniquet and total operative time during total knee arthroplasty and the occurrence of deep vein thrombosis. METHODS Seventy-eight consecutive patients from our institution underwent cemented total knee arthroplasty for degenerative knee disorders. The pneumatic tourniquet time and total operative time were recorded in minutes. Four categories w...

OBJECTIVE Tourniquet use for extremity hemorrhage control is common in military trauma. Tourniquet use may be accompanied by systemic hypotension, but this phenomenon has not been studied. We aimed to define the muscle effects of the combined insult of tourniquet-induced skeletal muscle ischemia-reperfusion injury (I-R) and hemorrhagic hypotension. DESIGN After a 33% carotid arterial hemorrha...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to compare the effect of tourniquet-induced ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury on the recovery of muscle function with and without prior hemorrhage. METHODS Male Sprague-Dawley rats (initially 400-450 g) were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups (n=8 per group): (1) hemorrhage (33% of estimated blood volume) plus tourniquet +H/+TK; (2) tourniquet alone (...