MAT tourniquet

What we're gonna do now is have a look at the MAT tourniquet, Mechanical Application Tourniquet. Now, this one's a little bit different from the CAT tourniquet and the Soft T tourniquet, because it works on a pulley system. The tourniquet itself has sort of a C shape to it, and that goes around the arm. On the top here, you've got a winder which you actually wind up to apply tension. When you actually put it on, you hold that away from the arm and you can pull this through to tighten it on, and then you physically wind it up. To apply this, we slide it over the arm. 

This one will work just as well on a leg, there's plenty of material left there. We apply that over. Using the tail here, we'll just pull that so it's tight. On the top here is the release winch. As long as you just make sure, again, that it's 5 cm above the elbow. And on here, just lift that up, and then you literally just wind it up and you need to do it until you apply a lot of pressure on. Bend the tab over, and on the white section where you can write the time, it's been applied.

This works very well. The only real disadvantage of this one is and generally speaking, we try and have the width of the tourniquet at least 3.5 cm, whereas this one is a little bit narrow. But it still works well, it's very effective. The only other thing with it is, there's a metal buckle on it, and the metal buckle is directly pushing into the skin. This will cause them discomfort. But they do work effectively. When we actually put it on, we will leave it on. Remember, only a doctor in a hospital is removing this. You need to make sure it's on tight enough. If needed you can apply more pressure just by twisting it 'round a little bit more.

This one's very good as well because it's every click will give you more tension, whereas the other types, you have to actually do a complete half turn. Now, with this one, if you're practising this, you then need to get it ready for use again, and you need to take it off. The other ones are quite easy. This one is also easy, but you just need to be a little bit more careful. On the side here is a release button. When you hit that release button it will release the tension. But this tag at the top will spin 'round, so make sure you don't hit yourself on it. Just push the button. You can see that just span 'round. Then once you've done that, you can push the button on the side to release the tape, take it off of the arm. Then to reset it, just push the release button and just pull the strings out here. That will just make it go to the point where it's ready to use for the first time. Then all you need to do is just tidy up the bands, and it's ready to use.