Patient Benefits of HemaClear: Less pain

Intra-operative and post-operative tourniquet pain is common in 40% of cases when using pneumatic tourniquet.

Multiple independent peer-reviewed clinical studies have shown that Tourniquet pain is significantly reduced when HemaClear? is used. What is the mechanism of wide-tourniquet tourniquet pain and how is it mitigated by the narrow HemaClear??

This MRI of a thigh with pneumatic tourniquet clearly shows the source of the pain: the deformation and stretching of the fascia (red arrow), where the C-fibers that conduct pain to the spinal cord reside. It is like a circumferential “Charlie Horse”.

The diagrams on the right are from Eyal Levenberg’s finite element analysis of stresses & strains in a limb beneath a wide (top) and a narrow (bottom) tourniquets. It helps understand the biomechanics and the safety of HemaClear.

The pressure distribution beneath a pneumatic tourniquet is uniform and as high as the tourniquet pressure all over. The surface (skin) pressure beneath a HemaClear is essentially the same as under a pneumatic tourniquet, but dissipates radially due to the elastic properties of the tissues.

The result is that the overall pressures applied by a wide pneumatic tourniquet on the artery (red arrows) and the nerve (black arrows) are higher, extend over a much longer distance and the gradients are much more abrupt and steep.

References Journal of Arthroplasty, 2013. Nondrainage Decreases Blood Transfusion Need and Infection Rate in Bilateral TKA. Demirkale, et al. “Significantly fewer patients reported pain in the thigh…” JHS(E), 2010 Pain and paraesthesia produced by silicone ring and pneumatic tourniquets. “...significantly lower pain score”