Tourniquet Use in Orthopaedics and a Novel Tourniquet Pressure Safety Margin

Description

Abigail Johnson, a military registrar from Wessex deanery, presents at a conference on the development of guidelines for the use of tourniquets in orthopedics. She highlights the necessity of having these guidelines due to the controversial nature of tourniquet usage, emphasizing both local and systemic risks such as nerve injury and tissue ischemia. In her presentation, she discusses the critical components of tourniquet safety, including time limits, width, and pressure settings. Johnson advocates for a maximum tourniquet time of under two hours and recommends using wider tourniquets to minimize tissue injury. She also introduces a new pressure safety margin to tailor tourniquet pressure to individual patients based on anatomical data. Johnson concludes her presentation with suggestions for future research areas, specifically focusing on pediatric pressures and reperfusion breaks. After her talk, she engages in a Q&A session addressing audience inquiries about non-pressure measuring tourniquets and seeks feedback on the proposed guidelines.

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