The effectiveness of the manual pressure points technique for hemorrhage control—The 2022 THOR pre‐conference meeting experience

Abstract

Introduction Limb and junctional hemorrhage are leading causes of potentially preventable death among trauma casualties. Hemorrhage control for these regions could be achieved by direct or indirect pressure. The manual pressure points (MPP) involves applying manual pressure on the arterial supply to occlude distal blood flow without the need for specialized equipment. Study Design and Methods Prospective, non‐randomized, human volunteer, controlled environment study involving 38 healthy military caregivers, with 26 participants attending a short instructional session. During a medical exercise, participants were requested to apply pressure on the supraclavicular and femoral points aiming to stop regional blood flow, measured by distal pulse palpation. The measures recorded included achievement of distal pulse cessation, success in achieving cessation for a full minute, and subjects' pain scores reported after each attempt. Results All participants succeeded in achieving distal pulse cessation for both the supraclavicular and femoral points for a full minute. The median time to initial success was 3.0 (interquartile range 2.0–5.0) seconds in the supraclavicular point and 4.5 (interquartile range 3.0–6.0) seconds in the femoral point. Pain scores ranging between 0 and 3 were reported by most subjects during supraclavicular (68.4%) and femoral occlusion (84.2%). Conclusion The MPP technique was highly effective in occluding distal palpable pulses in healthy volunteers when applied to the supraclavicular and femoral arteries. Brief instruction on the technique can potentially improve the chances of achieving hemorrhage control within 5 s. Further research is required to determine efficacy among different populations and providers with varying experience levels.