Does Evidence Support Techniques of Compression and Tourniquets to Control Bleeding due to Trauma? A Review of Literature.

Problem: Any severe injury can lead to life-threatening blood loss within minutes, time is of the essence. Because trauma victims often die of blood loss, rather than the injury itself, stopping the bleeding is the top priority. Use of compression and/or tourniquets are generally used to control bleeding. But what does the evidence say regarding how well these techniques slow and/or stop bleeding?

Methods: This review of literature provides information on the evidence regarding techniques such as compression and or tourniquets to slow and/or stop bleeding.

Results: A search of three data bases (PubMed, CINAHL and MEDLINE) was performed using the following key words: traumatic bleeding or hemorrhage, control, compression and tourniquet. From these searches, duplicates, non-human studies, non-English studies and studies over 20 years old were removed resulting in a total of 27 articles.

Conclusions: Evidence regarding specific techniques of compression and/or tourniquets found in the literature to control traumatic bleeding in humans is presented. This provides important information to individuals involved in wound care.