Axiostat Haemostatic Pads

One new haemostatic dressing that's come onto the market quite recently is Axiostat. Now Axiostat is 100% chitosan so it will work to provide a good effective barrier against serious bleeding. It's available in three main sizes, we have small, medium, and large and it's also available in Military Grade which are in a different packaging. They also do a dental range as well. And with the dental range, there are small plugs that you can use for dental bleeding. So it's something quick when we've got a case of a very serious dental bleed, a very quick easy way of stopping that bleed.

Now with these dressings here, they work slightly different from others because they are a pad which you can either pack a wound with or you can use it over the top. So, on the packet themselves, you'll actually see the size of the dressing that's there, so it's small, medium, or large. On the back of the packaging, you'll see the instructions and other information there. So it's always worth when you get it to have a good look at the instructions.

To open it, there's a little notch on either side, just makes it easier to open the dressing. So just pull it and tear it off. Once you've done that, you can open up the package and you can take out the Axiostat. As you can see, it's quite a rigid dressing. Now with this sort of dressing, if you're packing it into a wound, it will go into the wound but it's also very good at some of the smaller cuts that people might get.

Maybe if someone's taking out an IV line and you've got a big bleed, a venous bleed, these are quite easy as you can apply them straight onto the skin and then they'll react with the blood. So how you use this is... Suppose you have a cut or even the cut here will do in sense of the IV needle, apply the dressing straight on, you're going to put a bit of gauze over the top and then you apply direct pressure for a few minutes.

Now, this direct pressure will A: Help stop the bleeding, but also it's giving time for the Axiostat to react to the blood and then it will stay in place. Once you've applied it and it's reacted with the blood and it's staying there, you have two choices now. One would be put a secondary trauma dressing over the top and hold it in place in order to get them to the emergency services. If the dressing is being used may be in a hospital setting or something maybe again for an example like the IV line bleed, then it may well be that it can just stay on for a short space of time. Now we know it's set and then you can actually remove it.

So to remove this, you use water or sterile saline water. Squirt it on to it and then you'd be able to just peel that back off of the skin and you should find that the bleed has then stopped. So with this range, it's slightly different in the way you're working with them and they're good for more smaller cuts or cuts that are quite serious or could be serious but it's something that you can put on and then maybe take off so maybe medical procedures and things like this, this sort of range is very, very good.