The Potential of Emulsified Fluorocarbon Blood Substitutes in Treating Disaster Victims

Abstract

As with many manmade and natural disasters, those involving airports and aircraft give rise to a number of emergency medical situations that require prompt and sometimes drastic responses. The number of casualties can be very large and adequate hospital facilities can be quite distant from the disaster site, even when the latter is at an airport. Obviously, the situation is compounded when the accident has occurred at a remote place or involves a landing on water. Emergency measures are therefore of great importance to minimize loss of life and reduce exacerbations of initial injuries. Fortunately, major disasters are infrequent. This very fact, however, makes it even more impractical at most airports to have on hand at all times a large supply of blood and the facilities for typing and cross-matching rapidly and accurately. No supply of blood, of course, exists on any ordinary aircraft. There are therefore good reasons why artificial preparations capable of carrying oxygen and carbon dixoide and maintaining blood volume have potential usefulness in airport and airplane disasters.These disasters can involve one or more forms of bodily injury including physical trauma, burns, and asphyxiation (Table 1). All can lead to shock, and some form of emergency treatment is often required to restore blood volume and oxygenation levels. Since any delay in initiating treatment must be avoided, the required materials should be on hand and in a form which allows their being used without delay. Artifical blood replacement preparations (1-4) based on liquid perfluorochemicals have a number of desirable attributes in this regard.