Integrated Tourniquet System Pants and Shirts - 2008 Innovation Awards Winner: Uniforms & Body Armor

The battlefield has changed. Whether it's on the streets of Baghdad or Los Angeles, more soldiers and officers are suffering from extremity wounds. With advances in body armor and helmets the most common cause of preventable deaths can be attributed to blood loss from an extremity wound. BLACKHAWK!'s Integrated Tourniquet System (I.T.S.)pants and shirts integrate four tourniquets in the pants and shirt (two lower leg, two upper leg; two lower arm, two upper arm), thus providing the operator with life-saving devices that can easily be used by himself or a partner.

The I.T.S. system allows for single-handed application with a flip-pull-twist activation; all in seconds, providing complete occlusion of blood. Both the I.T.S. pants and shirt are comfortable to wear, made of durable fabric, and can be washed and dried without affecting the quality of the tourniquets. Operators can wear the clothing in training scenarios and reactivate the tourniquets multiple times. With an increase in extremity wounds, the I.T.S. is always present to save a limb, if not a life.