Talk:Field Manual: Medi-Kit

Actually, the medi-kit DOES seems to render combat medics totally obsolete. Jasonred 23:06, 6 March 2009 (CST)

This is all fluff-text created for our amusement. In the game, the Medi-kit does seem to make medics obsolete, but obviously the Medi-Kit cannot deal with forcible amputations, cardiac arrest, organ damage, etc., thus the text. It should also be noted that the Medi-Kit just seems to stop bleeding, and not actually heal the wound, which might be fatal in the case of grenade shrapnel, or crippling in the event of, say, an eye injury or blow to the head, since it may be hours before the combat is over and the Skyranger makes it back to the base infirmary.

Adding in some personal experience, I'm trained in the use of CPR and Automated External Defibrillators, and one thing they make sure to stress in the class is that CPR and AED use are only the second and third steps in survival chain for cardiac emergencies. The first is awareness/detection; the fourth is professional medical attention, such as paramedics or an ER doctor. The AED can get the heart working properly again, but they like to check you out after you have one used to figure out why you had an issue.

On the other hand, contrary to movie protrayals, CPR rarely will revive someone on its own. It is, instead, a stopgap measure intended to keep oxygen flowing through the body and to the brain, to stave off brain damage and buy enough time for someone to show up with an AED or the ambulance and paramedics to arrive. I feel the Medi-Kit serves the same place as an AED, and especially CPR; it is a stopgap measure that allows the soldier to live long enough to receive proper medical attention. Arrow Quivershaft 01:14, 7 March 2009 (CST)

Yup. When you get right down to it, even hooking someone up to a heart lung machine won't revive them, what are the chances for CPR? In actual fact, the fact that someone has stopped breathing/heart stopped means that something really serious has occured, even a fully equipped hospital has between 25-75% chance of survival in cases of respiratory or heart failure.

But why are you going off topic about CPR?

You're wrong about needing field medics though. That medi-kit is some L337 gear... it does heal, and quite handily at that! Patient can't shoot straight because he's been shot in the arm? Stick this into him and watch him hold his gun as steady as ever! Got someone who's been knocked unconsious? For WHATEVER reason? (electrical shocks, smoke inhalation, who knows what a stun bomb does) Just stick this device into them and watch whatever miracle drugs it has revive them and put them back into fighting shape! Patient is unconscious and moments away from dying of blood loss? Stimulants and healing nanites will let him run jump and make his way unassisted into the troop transport! ... All in all, the med-kit is some rather ridiculously effective piece of equipment, it's like in D&D, who needs bandages when you have "Cure Light Wounds"? Jasonred 04:18, 7 March 2009 (CST)

The empirical chance of CPR reviving someone from a heart stoppage ("Code Blue"), when it happens in ICU, was 15% back in 1992. I'm not sure how much this has changed since then. I don't think the hospital that had to use CPR twice on me had an AED; was that invented yet? -- Zaimoni 12:37, 7 March 2009 (CST)

I think X-COM's professional medical attention includes controlled regeneration of limbs. (Basically a matter of being able to controllable revert tissue to stem cells. The rat model of limb regeneration from the 1950's basically failed from stem cell deficiency. There weren't enough stem cells in the bone marrow to do the leg properly, so the result looked like a wrong-handedness thalidomide birth defect. -- Zaimoni 12:44, 7 March 2009 (CST)

The AED wasn't in common deployment by then, I don't think. However, an AED is a unit to be placed in public areas. Hospitals have access to much larger professional defibrillators(which the AED is the idiot-proof little brother to.) As for why I went "off topic", I was attempting to use it to explain my position in this discussion.

Regarding the use of the Medi-Kit, you're somewhat off. While healing of fatal wounds does restore HP, X-COM units have their base accuracy multiplied by the percent of HP they have remaining. If a soldier only has 20% of their maximum HP remaining, they only will have 20% of their base firing accuracy, which means they probably aren't shooting straight at all. So no, the Medi-Kit is not an instant wound regenerator.

As for the stimulants, there are chemicals that can do things like this, though their names escape me. They'd need a injection, sure, but it should work. And pain-killers, well, there's plenty of narcotics that block pain off quite well. Arrow Quivershaft 12:58, 7 March 2009 (CST)