30: REBOA for Prolonged Field Care with Joe DuBose

Dr. Joe DuBose is an Air Force Trauma Surgeon who recognized early in his career that hemorrhage was the number one killer of potentially survivable patients. This led him to a fellowship in vascular surgery and, as Dennis put it made him a guru in the emerging technology that allows a catheter to be placed in the femoral artery and snaked up past a bleed in the pelvis, abdomen and even chest where a balloon is then inflated cutting off all blood flow below that point. Dr. DuBose was the first to do This in the ED using a newer version that had a small enough diameter that a vascular repair would not be required after use. It is simply placed through a central line and removed as such later on. This is called REBOA or Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta. As you can imagine this is not without limits and complications if done improperly.