When people get injury and bleed, they need to stop bleeding quickly. However, stop bleeding is not easy as we usually expected, and it will cause serious damages such as death. According to Christian Kastrup, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, he said, “Bleeding is the number one killer of young people, and maternal death from postpartum hemorrhage can be as high as one in 50 births in low resource setting so these are extreme problem.” Since he thought that traditional method of halting bleeding are not very effective, UBC researchers created the first self-propelled particles, which can against the flow of blood to treat severe bleeding, a potentially huge advancement in trauma care.

A group of researchers, biochemical engineers and emergency physicians finally develop simple, gas-generating calcium carbonate micro-particles, and its powder, releasing carbon dioxide gas, helps stopping critical bleeding. According to a group of researchers, they said that the carbonate forms porous micro particles that can bind with a clotting agent known as tranexamic acid, and transport it through wounds and deep into the damaged tissue. After studying, they made a scenario, which is similar with catastrophic event like a gunshot wound, and used particles. It proved high effective with stopping bleeding. Kastrup said, “The area we’re really focusing on is postpartum hemorrhage: in the uterus, after childbirth where you cannot see the damaged vessels but you can put the powder into that area and the particles can propel and find those damaged vessels.”

In my opinion, this self-propelled powder is an incredible creation, which definitely affect people’s lives. With more rigorous testing and development, I hope that it will be brought the agent to market so that the particles could have a wide range of uses, which are from sinus operations to treating combat wounds.