I was watching a war flick. There was a big boom, dirt flew everywhere, actors yelling “Medic! Meeediiiic! Gurgle. Sputter, ack, ack!” And the medic looked at the grisly mess, tore open a square package and sprinkled powder all over the wound.
Not knowing what else to Google for, I looked up “wound power” but it just gets veterinary results about where to buy it rather than tell me about it.
So what was the powder stuff the medic was sprinkling on the wound? (Presumably some kind of antiseptic, right?)
What exactly does it do? Is it still used today? (It was a WWII flick). When the zombies come and I’m the last survivor, could I save my leg by dumping the stuff on the wound? What if the zombies tried to eat my brain? Can you dump that powder directly on organs and brains or is it strictly for the external part of gunshot and shrapnel wounds?
See THIS is what happens when I start looking up my cat’s medication on-line, in opens a Pandora’s box of dumb medical questions.
The stuff you saw in the movie was sulfa powder, a Sulfonamide anti-bacterial drug discovered in 1936. Here in another good site with info on sulfonamide drugs.
It was probably a powdered form of one of the early Sulfa antibiotics. They were used pretty often in WWII.
On Tuesday I can ask one of the docs I work with. He actually was a practicing MD in the army in WWII. Probably one of a handful still in clinical practice.
Sulfa drugs aren’t used as much as they used to be, right? So is this powder not really used anymore? And I suppose if I’m allergic to sulfa drugs then the zombies would be the least of my problems if I sprinkled it on my brain.
scratches it off the Crayons’s Apocalypse Shopping List
Wait, if that sulfa powder isn’t used much anymore, is there something else they sprinkle directly on the wounds or do they just give you a shot in the butt of a broad-spectrum antibiotic?
I still prescribe sulfa-based drugs a handful of times a week. It’s a good medication for urinary tract infections and other susceptible systemic infections. It’s helpful in prophyllaxing against pneumocystis carinii in AIDS patients. Topical sulfa creams are used on burns, and sulfa drops for eye and ear infections.
I don’t recall seeing any powder to dump into wounds, but I expect it is out there somewhere.
Not all wounds need treatment with antibiotics. Usually it is best to just clean them well with antiseptic solutions, and dress them. At times other antibiotic creams and ointments are also placed on them. Some wounds, like animal or human bites, merit antibiotic pills or injections.
Wounds sustained from falling into a septic pit or onto a pungee stick would probably merit antibiotic treatment.
That reminds me, what’s the deal with “gram-negative” and “gram-positive” bacteria? The whole thing that got me started on this was looking up my cat’s Orbax.
When I read this OP, I immediately thought of QuikClot. This powder is now Military Issue. It clots up the blood and stops the bleeding almost instantly!
But if this was an old war movie, I guess it was the Sulfa Powder everyone else mentioned. Beats me. I don’t know much about how they did things back in the long, long ago. In the before-time.
As far as injectable antibiotics in the field: Rocephin is a key component in any aid bag.
The Gram stain differentiates between the two main types of cell wall. A specific dye is placed in with the cultured cells. If the cells take up the dye, they are Gram-positive. If they do not, they are Gram-negative. This determines, in part, which drugs will be effective against that kind of bacteria, and it’s also an important first cut in classifying the species of bacterium.
What kinds of medicines are prescribed in those situations when the patient is allergic? Sulfa drugs are, as far as I know, my only high-level allergy.
Well, dapsone or pentamidine can both be used instead of sulfa for pneumocystis prophyllaxis. Lots of other antibiotics can be used for run-of-the-mill bladder infections. Sulfa is almost never the only possible choice.
I didn’t think they were as I’ve never had any problems obtaining medicines… I was just curious as to how common it was as I sometimes get a quizzical look when I tell nurses my allergies.
That’s because they are thinking “A-ha! One of them!” and then they put your name in The Book.
I’m allergic to penicillin, get the itchy, puffy hands and feet. They think I may be allergic to sulfa drug based on some reaction I had as a kid, but I don’t remember. But there was a freaky article in a paper about a woman who found out she was allergic to sulfa drugs because she was precribed big doses during a hospital stay and the sulfa drugs made her skin peel off! :eek: Bewteen that and the zombies, I’d take the zombies.
But I have another question – in my research for my Zombie Apocalypse Shopping List[sup]TM[/sup], I noticed that one of the antibiotics, I think it was Vancomycin, had something weird: For adults 7.5 mg/kg every six hours… for infants 10-15 mg/kg every 8. Made me think “Waitaminute! That’s like twice as much for someone who is about, I dunno, 1/5 the size of an adult!”
What the heck is that about? Is it just that wee ones don’t have bacteria fightin’ immune systems? Is that normal?
Note: In my preparation for the Zombies arrival I just read an article about “how to set a fractured bone… on yourself”, oh, dear Og, I grossed myself out! The internet is full of evil things!
That’s mg/kg, not flat dosage. So an infant weighing 10 kg might get 150 mg dose, while a grown adult weighing 80 kg would get 600 mg. A lot more than the infant, just not as much by fraction of body weight …
Uh… nope, I’m still not getting it. Why wouldn’t the 10 kg infant get a 75 mg dose? How come it just doesn’t scale down proportionately? What am I missing?