Lethbridge Hurricanes now equipped with lifesaving kit

The city of Lethbridge is taking the initiative to provide our local hockey team with a special lifesaving kit. It’s a first for a hockey arena. 

Five minutes…that’s how quickly it can take to bleed to death following a severe injury.  

And no one knows this better than those who play the fastest game around where anything can happen in a split second. 

Last October the hockey community and the world were shaken when American hockey player Adam Johnson, who was playing for the Nottingham Panthers, bled to death just minutes after being slashed in the throat by another player’s skate blade during a televised game in Europe. 

It was this incident that prompted Lethbridge anesthesiologist Dr. Kirstin Derdall to approach the City of Lethbridge about providing Enmax Centre and the Lethbridge Hurricanes with special lifesaving tools.
Enter the STOP THE BLEED®  initiative. 

STOP THE BLEED® is a public awareness campaign across Canada and the U.S. that stems from the tragic school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.  

“It involves enhanced training, medication and treatment,” says Greg Adair, Fire Chief with Lethbridge Fire and Emergency Services. 

“In the setting of a major bleed, minutes count,” says Derdall.

Which is why the STOP THE BLEED® kit includes special hemostatic dressings, or medicated gauze. The medication on these dressings is derived from shellfish which triggers the clotting action.   

“It actually enhances clotting factors by ten times,” says Adair.

The kit also includes a tourniquet which can be used for injuries to arms and legs. The tourniquet helps stop the blood flow to that area by squeezing tightly above the wound. 

“With a little bit of training and education; apply pressure, put the dressing, put a tourniquet on. Right? Three kind of simple steps.” says Derdall.

“You know it can happen to anybody,” says Matt Anholt, Lethbridge Hurricanes Assistant Coach. “Anybody needs to have the ability to work with the new machine that we have here now as well as cuts with stopping the bleed and understanding how to handle with – from all facets of CPR or a bad gash on somewhere that could be critical for the body to sustain life.”

Emax Centre will be getting the city’s first kit with more kits planned for other local ice rinks and the post-secondary institutions. With the hope that other communities will roll them out at hockey arenas.