Injectable Foam Stops Internal Bleeding by Expanding Inside the Body

Arsenal Medical, a company based in Watertown, Massachusetts has recently decided to look into the possibility of developing a so-called injectable foam which, once inside an individual's organism, would expand up to the point that internal bleedings would be either slowed, or stopped altogether.

The researchers working on this project explain that their goal is that of lending a helping hand to battlefield doctors and first responders who more often than not find that they lack the medical equipment they need in order to save a soldier's or a civilian's life.

Apparently, this injectable foam would help them buy some time, meaning that, thanks to its putting a leash to otherwise uncontrollable internal bleedings, the soldier and/or the civilian could hang on long enough for him/her to be taken to a proper hospital.

MIT Technology Review explains that this injectable foam is basically made up of two different liquids.

It is Arsenal Medical's hope that, once work on this project progresses, they will figure out a way to safely inject these liquids into an individual's body through their bellybutton.

According to the same source, the company had to test roughly 1,200 mixtures before being able to pin down the exact two liquids whose combination would have made it possible for the right kind of foam to form inside the human body.

As Upma Sharma, presently employed as the head of the foam-technology research at Arsenal, puts it, “When we started, we thought you wanted something that would mix well with the blood because that would help it get to the site [of bleeding].”

However, “It turns out that’s not right; you want something that doesn’t mix with blood and instead pushes it out of the way.”

Courtesy of a $15.5 million (€11.63 million) grant made available to Arsenal Medical by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, it is quite likely that this technology might soon the made available to soldiers and the doctors working with them.