Implementation of Portable Automatic Tourniquet with High-Elasticity Biocompatible Strap

Abstract

The most common screening techniques to diagnose a patient’s illness are blood collection and intravenous procedures. To find a collection or injection site, conventional blood collection support tools, such as latex tubing and buckle-type tourniquets, are generally used to compress the patient’s blood vessels. This conventional passive method has significant problems such as latex allergy, vulnerability to site contamination and potential bloodstream infection, and physical damage due to improper use. To overcome the disadvantages of conventional blood collection support tools, an automatic tourniquet with a high-elasticity biocompatible strap was constructed. The automatic tourniquet is designed to automatically adjust the strap length using a motor to control the pressure according to the body dimensions of patients. In order to evaluate the performance of the automatic tourniquet, blood flow characteristics were analyzed using an ultrasound measurement system. The results demonstrated that the automatic tourniquet showed better performance compared with those of other blood collection support tools.