Imperial College Healthcare Trust, St Mary’s Hospital and Highland Biosciences (HLB) are helping to develop a new device to rapidly detect whether a patient is suffering from internal bleeding.
Specialist trauma surgeons from St Mary’s Hospital, the National Institute of Health Research Diagnostic Evidence Cooperative (NIHR DEC), and designers from HLB, are in the process of trialling the hand-held device called CoaguScan.
CoaguScan is a small life-saving device that follows trauma patients into the ward. It uses tiny disposable sensors that are dipped into a sample of patient’s blood and quickly measures whether the blood is capable of forming a blood clot, this enables clinicians to know rapidly whether a patient requires a transfusion.
The trial is being conducted in St Mary’s Hospital, one of the major trauma centres in London, seeing over 3000 trauma patients a year.
“This device has potential to transform how we look after trauma patients by enabling us to know extremely quickly whether a blood transfusion is need and the make-up of that blood. The first ‘proof of concept’ phase trail at St Mary’s Hospital showed promising results and we are confident this devise has potential to help us save more lives in future,” said consult military and trauma surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare Trust, Mansoor Khan.
Currently in England, it takes up to an hour to determine whether a patient requires a blood transfusion, this new technology will change the way in which trauma patients are treated.
“Our team are very proud and excited to be working on such Pioneering piece of equipment and can see how this technology has potential to change the way in which we treat rapidly bleeding trauma patients in the future,” Senior Division Researcher Nurse at Imperial College Healthcare Trust, Emily Ashworth.