Lifeguard Ambulance Service has become the first ground-based emergency medical service in south Mississippi to offer TXA, a drug designed to prevent excessive blood loss from trauma or other causes of bleeding.
Lifeguard Chief EMS Chief Ben Sones said TXA – formally called tranexamic acid –has been used in air services and the military for several years, but hasn’t really made its way to pre-hospital care units until recently.
“It helps decrease the casualty rate and helps reduce hemorrhaging – for instance, if somebody has a severe cut on their leg, or maybe their leg is missing,” he said. “It also helps if they have internal bleeding.
“We have a certain set of guidelines and protocols, and if (patients) meet this criteria, we can give them this medicine.”
TXA works to stop blood clots from breaking down by blocking plasminogen from being converted to the enzyme plasmin. It has been used during postpartum bleeding, tooth removal, nosebleeds and surgeries with high risk of blood loss.
The drug was made available to Lifeguard staff after a Lamar County doctor did some research and determined that it would be a good fit for the service, especially with Lifeguard’s rural service area.
“We work a lot of automobile accidents and things of that nature on the south/southwest end of the county, around Baxterville,” said Dwayne Tullos, regional director of operations for Lifeguard Ambulance Service. “When you get down in that area with a severe trauma, obviously if the weather’s bad, a helicopter can’t fly, and even if they can, it’s going to take them a few minutes to get there.
“Having said that … that’s where this medicine is going to come into play and help really reduce that casualty rate, especially with internal bleeding. Most external bleeding, in a worst-case scenario, you can put a tourniquet on it. With internal bleeding, you can’t put a tourniquet on it, so this will give us the ability to kind of put a tourniquet on the inside. Before, we didn’t really have a medicine in the toolbox that we could give that would actually promote clotting on internal injuries like that.”
Lamar County Administrator Jody Waits also said the drug would be a boon to the ambulance service.
“I would think that would be a major help,” he said. “When you’re rendering first aid, stopping the bleeding is at the top of the list of things to do.
“So that’s very important, and I’m proud that they have that drug and that ability to render even better pre-hospital care than before, which I think was already exceptional.”
