New frostbite treatments

[rob]

I thought this was mildy interesting, so I figured this might be the place to post a link

 

I saw this article on frostbite. Apparently, an anti-coagulant drug used to treat stroke victims is also effective at preventing amputations due to frostbite.

 

It was found that of the patients who received the drug none had a limb amputated, compared with 14 amputations among a comparison group of 26 who got standard care, and only 10 percent of affected fingers and toes were amputated in the drug group compared to 41 percent among those who did not get the drug.

 

I wonder if this drug will find a spot among the medications commonly brought along expeditions.

[iluka]

This is interesting. One positive study may not be enough to get this adopted as standard practice and hopefully they'll be some follow-up studies to try and confirm the results.

 

It will be useful to help define how severe the frostbite has to be before you use this. It's not a completely benign medication. Because it's a "clot-busting" medication (used for heart attacks and stroke) it has the potential to cause bleeding in not particularly good places to have bleeding (i.e. the brain).

 

This is not a medication I would be keen to use in the field on an expedition. In the hospital, people who receive it for a stroke or heart attack have to be monitored for a period of time afterwards to look for evidence of bleeding. If someone had a severe bleeding episode in the field, it would be a bad situation.

[Jens]

Very interesting for sure.