I had a really bad nosebleed on sunday that took a while to stop, so on monday I went to the pharmacy and bought some guaze pads that are designed to adhere to the wound and stop bleeding if you have a nosebleed.
The nosebleed started up again today because I blew my nose (she was asking for it) and I put one of those gauze pads in. it stopped the bleeding pretty well.
So how do they work? Do they have clotting factors on them, platelets, or something else? I get the impression they are biopolymers made out of things like cellulose, so how do those stop clotting?
One brand of this stuff that I’ve heard of is Hematrix. Per their site:
The Hematrix® Active-Patch consists of a haemostatic, sponge-like polyurethane matrix impregnated with thrombin, calcium chloride (CaCl2) and the antifibrinolytic agent epsilon aminocaproic acid (EACA).
Thrombin promotes clotting, and the EACA acts to block the prevention of clotting. To get it all going, the calcium chloride coagulates blood.
IANAD, but the question put me in mind of the styptic powder we kept on hand in the event of an accidental overcut into the quick of our dog’s claw-nails. The answer, basically, was yes.
My non-medically educated memory directs me to the wiki article on Antihemorrhagics, which is exactly the sort of thing (a hemostatic agent) mentioned above by gotpasswords.
You don’t specify the exact product that gave you the nasally exsanguining relief you sought and obtained, but I suspect that among its active ingredients was probably something that was either a vasoconstrictor to topically close-down the blood vessels, a platelet aggregator for basic clotting to help stop blood-flow at the source, or a combination of both.
The label of whatever it was that you shoved up your nostril(s) with such success might hold the answer to the ingredients.
