Liquid Band-Aids: Could the Future Hold No Need for Stitches and Bandages?
Young bright mind at NYU may have changed medicine for generations to come.
When a severe traumatic injury occurs, the human body has minutes, mere minutes, to achieve hemostasis before it has lost too much blood, and loses consciousness. If not, a cut can turn into a fatal accident.
Hemostasis is the medical term for the body’s way of healing from an injured blood vessel. This involves clotting, and plugging the laceration or cut with platelets, so that the wound can heal without the body losing too much blood. For a simple cut, hemostasis occurs quickly and results in clotting and then scabbing. But when the body is under severe stress and shock, hemostasis is very hard to achieve.
NYU freshman Joe Landolina recently conceived a material that would almost instantly repair large wounds, and the results could be a complete game changer in the medical field. VetiGel is a new product which originated from Algae, or rather the polymers that algae is made up of. When broken down into even smaller pieces, the polymers become much like building blocks, which when injected into a wound immediately begin to form a mesh… almost the same way that platelets do. While the VetiGel holds the wound intact and stops major hemorrhaging, it also promotes and aids the body’s natural way of healing, by helping to produce Fibrin, the body’s natural clotting substance.
“What that means, on the one hand, is that the gel will make a very strong adhesive that holds the wound together, but on the other hand, that mesh acts as a scaffold to help the body produce fibrin at the wound’s surface.” ~ Joe Landolina
VetiGel is said to be able to stop bleeding from a major vessel in under 12 seconds, and completely heal the wound in minutes. Because the wound actually begins natural healing processes very quickly, the plant based polymer can be safely removed shortly after application.
A product like this could mean the difference between a workplace accident being just that, an accident, or a tragic fatality. It could also combat the issue of troops on the frontlines, who don’t have access to medical facilities and healthcare professionals, and who are faced with “survivable injuries” which become life-ending due to lack of resources or proximity to the care they require. Landolina and his partner Isaac Miller quickly expanded on this idea, hoping that a substance like VetiGel could change the game for paramedics, military personnel, and ultimately be in everyone’s purse and first aid kit, drastically lowering the severity of injuries for all people.
Of course like any new medical breakthrough, it undergoes an array of test stages and trials, but VetiGel is currently available for pre-order for licensed veterinarians, meaning it will be used in surgeries and trauma treatments on animals. Joe Landolina hopes that the product will soon gain FDA approval, and begin changing the way we view injuries.
It is certainly exciting to not only think that such solutions and ideas are available, but also that a young mind could have discovered this. The future is looking bright for the next generation of health care and treatment, and with incredible minds like Landolina out there, it’s safe to say that the future is just steps away.
