xSPANd Stretcher

Industrial Design / Medical Design

The xSPANd stretcher provides an “every-trip-carry” solution for emergency rescue of a patient with an immobilizing injury. These scenarios require helicopter rescue or team members must fashion a stretcher from materials on hand. Current wilderness medicine education teaches various improvisation techniques. However, these solutions make it difficult to fully immobilize the body (which is of vital importance with spine and neck injuries) and are often impossible in areas with no trees or equivalent plant life. In addition, current rigid stretchers (commonly utilized for less remote rescues) are beginning to fall out of use due to pressure points that can reduce blood flow and lack of thermal insulation increasing the risk of hypothermia.

The xSPANd stretcher utilizes a simple-to-manufacture expanding insulation foam technique to make a small and packable package expand to become a body-length rigid stretcher. It also molds to the patient’s body with no pressure points and is extremely thermally insulating eliminating the risk of hypothermia.

When it is decided that a patient must be carried to medical care, a rescuer will first unpack and unroll the empty textile stretcher and its embedded liquid-filled bags. The patient is placed on the empty stretcher and secured with built in straps. The bags are stepped on, pushing the two-part foam through a static mixer at the outflow and into the interior of the stretcher. The now activated foam begins to expand through the stretcher cavity, molding around the patient’s body and entering specially formed channels designed to enhance overall rigidity. After approximately 20 minutes, the foam will fully expand and cure to a rigid state. The patient can now be lifted from the attached carry handles (in a variety of orientations flexible to changing needs) and carried for many miles to medical care.