Updated 30 July 2026 · Written for buyers sourcing hemostatic gauze in quantity

A poster on r/TacticalMedicine laid the problem out better than any product page has:

“Regular rolled Quikclot is ~$22, while z-fold regular and Combat Gauze are ~$42. All three are 3″ x 4 yard. Does z-folding cost $20 extra or am I missing…”

He was not missing anything. He had found the real question and then talked himself out of it.

Most people who search combat gauze vs quikclot, or type it the other way round as quikclot vs combat gauze, think they are choosing between two products. They are not. QuikClot is the brand; Combat Gauze is one product inside it. Both come out of the same company, both carry the same active agent, and the 3″ × 4 yd pack you are looking at exists in five different packaging identities that sit between roughly $11 and $62.

That spread is not a formulation difference. It is a procurement difference: sterility, a woven marker thread, a supply-chain number, and who the pouch was printed for.

So the useful question is not which one clots better. It is which identity your paperwork actually requires, and what happens if you buy the wrong one. Buy above your requirement and you have paid for a document nobody will ask you to produce. Buy below it and your shipment fails inspection at the gate.

This article sorts the five apart. It does not tell you whether the premium is worth paying. That is a separate calculation, and we link to it at the end.

QuikClot Is the Brand. Combat Gauze Is the Product.

Google’s AI summary gets this part right, so we will be brief.

So what is QuikClot Combat Gauze? QuikClot is a hemostatic product family owned by Teleflex, which acquired the original developer Z-Medica, and Combat Gauze is one line within that family. Combat Gauze vs QuikClot Combat Gauze is a comparison people genuinely search for, and the answer is that they are the same item under a short name and a long one. Asking which to buy is like asking whether to buy Toyota or a Corolla. The confusion is not the buyer’s fault. Retailers list the same dressing under at least four different product names, and the manufacturer’s own site splits military and law-enforcement lines across separate pages.

How does QuikClot Combat Gauze work? Every version below uses the same active agent: kaolin, an inert aluminium-silicate clay. Kaolin does not clot blood by itself and it does not react chemically with tissue. It presents a negatively charged mineral surface that activates Factor XII, which starts the intrinsic clotting cascade the patient already has. That is why kaolin gauze is non-exothermic. Earlier zeolite-based products released heat, and kaolin was adopted partly to stop that.

The QuikClot Combat Gauze ingredients list is short: rayon-polyester gauze, kaolin, and a vacuum pouch. No drug, no biologic, no animal-derived component. That last point matters to buyers in markets where crustacean-derived chitosan raises a dietary or religious objection, and it is one reason kaolin dominates military stocks.

One consequence matters for sourcing. Because the agent is a mineral coating on a woven substrate rather than a proprietary molecule, the thing that varies between $11 and $62 is not chemistry. Hold that thought through the next section.

The Five Identities of the Same Kaolin Gauze

Here is what US retailers were listing in July 2026. All figures are published web prices for single units, not contract or bulk pricing.

IdentityTypical listed priceSterileX-ray markerSold to
Training Combat Gauze≈ $10.99NoNoAnyone
Civilian rolled QuikClot≈ $22YesNoAnyone
Civilian Z-fold≈ $42YesNoAnyone
Combat Gauze LE$43.61 – $54.99YesYesLaw enforcement, EMS, government
Combat Gauze (MIL, Z-folded)≈ $61.98YesYesMilitary supply chain
Five kaolin gauze packaging identities compared by sterility marker and buyer channel

An oversized XL variant at 4″ × 4 yd, two-ply, lists around $110.19. It is a different dressing, not a different identity, so it sits outside this table.

Read the first and last rows together. Same 3″ × 4 yd, same kaolin, roughly 5.6× apart.

Training stock is the cheapest and the most dangerous to confuse

Sold as Combat Gauze Trainer, Moulage Trainer, or simply training Combat Gauze, it runs about $10.99 because it is not sterile and carries no hemostatic agent at all. The manufacturer describes it as completely inert, for simulated casualties only. It ships in a resealable pouch precisely because it is meant to be used, repacked and used again — which is what makes it cheap per repetition.

It looks close enough to the real thing to end up in the wrong bin. Label your training stock at intake and store it away from deployable kit. That is a warehouse control, not a purchasing decision, but it is the one error in this list that can hurt somebody.

Buyers running training programmes should also read the arithmetic the other way. At roughly $11 against $44 for the LE item, a distributor supplying a police academy can quote four training units for the price of one deployable dressing, which is usually what the academy actually wants, because students need repetitions rather than sterility. Ask the question at the enquiry stage. A quotation built entirely from sterile stock for a training contract is a quotation that will lose on price for no clinical reason.

The civilian versions differ by fold, not by agent

The rolled civilian product and the Z-folded civilian product carry the same kaolin gauze. Retailer descriptions put the rolled version at roughly 1.3 yd against 4 yd for the Z-fold. That is a single-source figure we have not been able to confirm against a manufacturer document, so treat the ratio as indicative.

The fold itself is real engineering. A Z-fold feeds out of the pouch in a continuous accordion, so one gloved hand can pack while the other maintains pressure. A roll needs two hands or a surface to work against. If you are stocking kits for people who may be working alone in poor light, the fold is worth paying for. If you are stocking a clinic bench, it is not.

Both civilian versions are sterile and individually vacuum-sealed in an easy-tear pouch. The vacuum matters more than buyers expect: it compresses a 4 yd length into something that fits an ankle kit, and it is the barrier that carries the expiry date. A pouch that has lost its vacuum has lost its sterility claim regardless of the printed date, so train receiving staff to reject soft packs rather than shelve them.

Length is where the two civilian items diverge in practice. A single junctional wound can consume a full 4 yd, and TCCC teaching allows for a second dressing if the first fails. Stocking 1.3 yd rolls means stocking more of them. Work out your per-casualty requirement first, then price the format — not the other way round.

QuikClot Combat Gauze LE vs MIL

This is where the Reddit thread with 57 replies lives, and it is the question retailers answer least well. Combat Gauze vs Combat Gauze LE comes down to paperwork, not performance.

Combat Gauze LE is the law enforcement version: 3″ × 4 yd of kaolin-impregnated gauze, vacuum-sealed in an easy-tear pouch, with an X-ray detectable strip. The military Z-folded version is the same dressing in olive-drab packaging, distributed through defence logistics rather than retail.

Vendor listings state that LE is restricted to law enforcement and government purchasers inside the US and cannot ship to military addresses. That is a distribution rule, not a performance rule. The gauze is the same.

A fourth name causes its own confusion. QuikClot Bleeding Control Dressing vs Combat Gauze looks like a comparison between two dressings, and it is mostly a comparison between two labels. The Bleeding Control Dressing is kaolin-impregnated Z-folded gauze sold through civilian channels, which places it in the third row of the table rather than outside it. Sizes differ between listings, so check the stated length rather than assuming it matches the 4 yd military item.

So the ≈$18 step from LE to MIL buys packaging colour and a place in a supply catalogue. We come back to that catalogue shortly, because it explains the whole price ladder.

Two practical notes for anyone quoting against these rows. First, the LE restriction is a US domestic distribution rule and has no bearing on what a distributor in Riyadh, Jakarta or Bogotá can import. Buyers outside the US often assume LE stock is somehow downgraded, and it is not. Second, olive-drab packaging is frequently written into tactical tenders as a specification in its own right, on the reasoning that white-and-red retail packaging is visible at night and in a dropped kit. If your customer’s specification says OD green, that is a packaging requirement you can meet without touching the dressing.

The spread across LE listings is worth noticing on its own. The same item appeared at $43.61, $45.15, $45.99, $48.95, $49.95 and $54.99 across six US retailers in the same week. A 26% spread on an identical SKU tells you these are margin decisions, not cost decisions. Useful context when a customer quotes you a competitor’s price as if it were a market rate.

How to work out which row you need

Work backwards from the document that will be checked, not from the product page.

Read your tender or protocol first. If it names a supply number, you need that row and no other. If it names “CoTCCC-recommended,” you need a listed product. If it specifies sterile hemostatic gauze with a radiopaque marker, several rows qualify and you can buy on price. If it says none of these, which covers most commercial distribution and most civilian first-aid channels, the sterile civilian Z-fold does the same clinical job as the row above it.

Then check one thing nobody checks until it is too late: what remaining shelf life on arrival you will accept, and whether that is written into the order.

The Blue Strip: Which Kaolin Gauze Carries an X-Ray Marker

Pull a length of LE or military Combat Gauze out of the pouch and you will see a blue thread woven along it. It is X-ray detectable, and its job is narrow: if gauze is left inside a body cavity, a radiograph finds it.

Z-fold kaolin gauze with blue X-ray detectable marker thread beside a radiograph

That matters when a casualty is packed in the field, handed off, moved through two or three facilities, and opened in an operating theatre by a surgeon who was not there when the packing went in. Nobody at that table knows how many yards went in, or how many came out at the first stop. The strip turns “we think there are two rolls in there” into something a radiograph can settle in ninety seconds.

Retained surgical items are a recognised never-event category in hospital systems, and gauze is the most common item involved. A dressing that cannot be imaged shifts the whole burden onto a count that was taken under fire, by someone whose job at that moment was not counting.

It matters much less when the person who packed the wound is still with the patient at the point of definitive care, which is the normal civilian pattern. A workplace responder who packs a laceration and rides to the emergency department with the patient can simply say what went in.

Retailer descriptions place the marker on the LE and military versions and not on civilian retail stock. We have not found a manufacturer document that states this as a blanket rule, so verify against the specific SKU rather than assuming by tier.

This is the point at which generic kaolin gauze usually loses the room. A dressing with no radiopaque strip cannot be reconciled by radiograph, and a hospital receiving system that expects one will treat its absence as a gap. If your buyers hand casualties into a surgical pathway, specify the marker and confirm it in writing before the first container ships. If they are stocking vehicle kits and workplace cabinets, you are paying for a feature that will never be exercised.

Ask suppliers whether they can add the thread. Some can. It is a weaving change, not a reformulation. The marker is a barium-loaded filament run into the substrate before impregnation, so it belongs to the textile stage of the process rather than the kaolin stage. What it does affect is tooling and minimum order quantity, which is why a supplier who says yes without mentioning MOQ has probably not done it before.

Put the requirement in the specification as a line item with its own acceptance test, not as a sentence in an email. “Radiopaque marker thread, verifiable by radiograph on a sample unit from each lot” is checkable. “X-ray detectable” on its own is not.

One more thing to settle at specification stage: whether the marker is required on every unit or only on the deployable tier. Training stock does not need it, and paying for it there is waste.

That “Recommendation” Is a Supply Catalogue Entry

Everyone quotes the same sentence. The current TCCC Guidelines, dated 1 May 2026, put it this way:

“For compressible (external) hemorrhage not amenable to limb tourniquet use or as an adjunct to tourniquet removal, use Combat Gauze as the CoTCCC hemostatic dressing of choice.”

Read on and the guideline lists alternatives in the same breath: Celox Gauze, ChitoGauze, XStat for deep narrow-tract wounds, iTClamp — and adds that any hemostatic dressing needs at least 3 minutes of direct pressure. It also says that if one dressing fails, remove it and apply a fresh one of the same or a different type.

That last clause is the guideline conceding that no single product is universal.

Kaolin gauze procurement documents comparing catalogue supply route and open specification route

Now look at the document behind the recommendation. The CoTCCC maintains a Recommended Devices and Adjuncts list. The version we retrieved is dated 15 December 2021. Its hemostatic section is not a ranking. It is a stock catalogue, keyed to Defense Logistics Agency nomenclature and National Stock Numbers:

Common nameDLA nomenclatureNSN
Combat Gauze (CG) Z-FoldBandage Gauze Impregnated 3″ W X 4 YDS L Kaolin Hemostatic Quik6510-01-562-3325
Celox Gauze, Z-fold 5′Dressing Hemostatic Celox Gauze 3″X5′ Z-folded6510-01-623-9910
ChitoGauzeDressing Hemostatic 144″ length 3″ width coated with Chitosan6510-01-591-7740
X-Stat, single applicatorApplicator Hemostatic Sponges and Dispenser Xstat-306510-01-644-7335
iTClampClamp Hemorrhage Control Sterile Medical Grade Polycarbonate6515-01-629-7044

Look at what the catalogue calls Combat Gauze: Bandage Gauze Impregnated 3″ W X 4 YDS L Kaolin Hemostatic. That is a generic specification. The line item describes a category of dressing; the brand is what has been stocked against it.

Search Combat Gauze NSN and you will land on 6510-01-562-3325 with no explanation attached, which is how most buyers meet the number for the first time. A National Stock Number is a thirteen-digit identifier used across NATO supply systems. It is how a supply sergeant orders a thing without describing it, how a warehouse tracks it, and how an auditor confirms that what arrived is what was funded. It attaches to a specific item from a specific source. It is not a quality mark, it carries no clinical endorsement, and it cannot be earned by building an equivalent product.

That distinction gets lost constantly. Read enough supplier material and you will find “military grade,” “NSN listed” and “CoTCCC approved” used as if they were the same claim. They are three different things, and only one of them exists as a formal category. There is no CoTCCC approval process. There is a committee that names products it recommends, and a logistics agency that assigns numbers to items it stocks.

How this reads in an actual tender

Three phrasings show up in hemostatic gauze tenders, and they impose very different obligations.

A tender that cites a stock number is closed. One item, one source, no equivalents. A bid offering an alternative will be scored non-compliant before anyone reads the technical section.

A tender that says “CoTCCC-recommended or equivalent” is ambiguous, and the ambiguity is usually resolved against the supplier. Ask the buyer in writing what evidence they will accept as equivalence before you price it.

A tender that specifies the characteristics is open: sterile kaolin-impregnated gauze, 3″ × 4 yd, Z-folded, radiopaque marker, ISO 13485 manufacture. That third form is the one a compliant non-listed manufacturer can win, and it is worth asking a procurement contact whether their specification could be written that way. Many buyers copy the first form out of habit rather than requirement.

What the catalogue entry actually tells you

Set the five hemostatic entries side by side and a pattern appears. Two are kaolin, one is chitosan, one is a sponge applicator, one is a clamp. The committee did not pick a winning chemistry. It stocked a range of tools for different wound geometries, which is exactly what the guideline text says when it tells a medic to switch dressing types if the first one fails.

A defence ministry writing “CoTCCC-recommended” into a tender is therefore not making a clinical claim about clotting speed. It is buying an auditable procurement trail: a number a logistician can order against, a document an inspector can check, and two decades of accumulated after-action reports. Those have genuine value. They are simply not the same thing as a better dressing.

One caveat on the document itself. The devices list we were able to retrieve carries a December 2021 date, while the guidelines above are current to May 2026. Committee lists are revised, so cite the version date whenever you quote one, and check for a newer revision before you put it in a bid. A stock number quoted from a superseded list is the kind of error that survives an internal review and dies at the buyer’s desk.

Which is why the honest answer to “does the expensive one work better” needs its own section.

Does Branded Combat Gauze Actually Clot Faster?

Two studies point in different directions, and quoting only one of them would be dishonest.

Kaolin gauze supplier validation scene with test reports and lot consistency checklist

Rall and colleagues, writing in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery in 2013, ran QuikClot Combat Gauze against four newer dressings in a swine femoral artery model. Forty-five seconds of free bleeding, then packing, then 3 minutes of pressure, then 150 minutes of observation. Combat Gauze achieved immediate hemostasis in 30% of animals with 60% survival. Celox Gauze reached 70% and 90%. Combat Gauze XL reached 80% and 70%.

Before anyone reaches for that as a headline: blood loss ranged from 29 to 64 mL/kg across all groups with no statistically significant differences between them, and the authors concluded that current hemostatic dressing technology “has potentially reached a plateau for efficacy.”

The honest reading is narrow. That study did not measure any advantage for the branded product over the alternatives tested. It also did not show that generics beat it. It showed a plateau.

Pull the frame back and a different picture appears. Causey and colleagues tested Combat Gauze in 2012 against a much harder model: 17 swine bled to 35% blood volume, then pushed into genuine acidosis and coagulopathy through aortic ischaemia-reperfusion. Standard gauze failed on the first application in every single animal. Combat Gauze achieved haemostasis in 93% of first applications and 100% on the second. The authors concluded that it “significantly outperforms standard gauze dressings in a model of major vascular hemorrhage in acidotic and coagulopathic conditions.”

That is the comparison that matters for stocking decisions. Kaolin gauze earns its place against plain gauze, and it holds up in exactly the patients who are hardest to treat; the full pressure-and-physiology breakdown is in our hemostatic dressing vs gauze comparison. What it has not demonstrated is a margin over other kaolin and chitosan dressings.

Both sentences are true and buyers need both. Kaolin beats regular gauze in the patients who are hardest to treat. Between one compliant kaolin dressing and another, the published evidence does not hand you a winner.

Animal-model results do not transfer cleanly to human trauma. A 40 kg pig under anaesthesia with a controlled arterial puncture is a repeatable model, which is why it is used, and it is not a man bleeding in a stairwell. Sample sizes in this literature are small, often ten animals per arm, which is why so many of these comparisons end in “no significant difference.” Absence of a measured difference at n=10 is weak evidence of equivalence, and it should not be sold as proof of it. That cuts against us as much as it cuts against the brand.

None of it substitutes for a product’s own test data. Ask any supplier, including us, for four things: in-vitro clotting time with the method stated, arterial transection results with the animal model and sample size, the kaolin loading per unit area, and lot-to-lot consistency data. Read the method before the number. A supplier who sends a single impressive figure with no protocol attached has sent you marketing.

The other question worth asking is what the dressing does when it fails. Kaolin gauze that does not achieve haemostasis in 3 minutes should be removed and replaced, per the guideline text quoted earlier, and the replacement can be a different type. Ask whether the product releases cleanly from a clot bed or shreds. That behaviour is rarely tested and rarely disclosed, and it is what a medic remembers.

Shredding is a substrate property rather than an agent property. A loosely woven or low-GSM gauze tears when it is pulled off a formed clot, leaves fibres behind and restarts the bleed. This is the most common place where a cheap kaolin dressing is genuinely worse than an expensive one, and it has nothing to do with the kaolin. If you are evaluating suppliers on price, evaluate the substrate first.

So Should You Pay the Combat Gauze Premium?

Short version: sometimes, and it depends on a document rather than a wound.

Search QuikClot Combat Gauze price and every result on the first page is a retailer listing. Nine of them. No analysis. A QuikClot Combat Gauze review will tell you the dressing works, which was never in dispute, and will not tell you which of the five identities you are holding.

The full calculation — what the certification premium actually buys, how the landed-cost multiple works, and which buyer profiles should pay it, sits on our kaolin hemostatic gauze sourcing page, because it is a procurement argument rather than a product one. If you are trying to decide whether that premium belongs in your budget, start there.

What this article can settle is the narrower question the Reddit poster asked. No, Z-folding does not cost $20. The fold costs a few cents. The $20 is the identity attached to the fold.

Before you leave this page, write down which row of the table your requirement sits in and what document put it there. If you cannot name the document, you are buying a tier on instinct — and instinct in this category reliably buys upward.

For a distributor the arithmetic compounds. A container of the top row instead of the third costs roughly twenty dollars a unit more, and at ten thousand units that is a two-hundred-thousand-dollar decision resting on a specification nobody re-read. Run the comparison on the tier your customers’ paperwork actually names, not on the tier your competitor happens to stock. Those are frequently different, and the gap is where your margin lives.

When Generic Kaolin Gauze Cannot Help You

If your tender names NSN 6510-01-562-3325, stop reading comparisons. That number belongs to one dressing from one manufacturer. We cannot supply that NSN, and no generic kaolin gauze can. Substituting an equivalent product against a specified stock number is how bids get disqualified.

The same applies to a specification written as “CoTCCC-recommended.” The recommendation attaches to named products on a list. It does not travel to a comparable dressing, however similar the construction, and any supplier who implies otherwise is telling you something that will not survive an audit.

Everywhere else, an alternative to Combat Gauze is a legitimate thing to be shopping for, and the questions worth asking a supplier are the ones this article has been circling: sterility method, marker thread, remaining shelf life, and what test data they will hand over unprompted.

What we do not claim

We manufacture kaolin hemostatic gauze. So read the following as boundaries we are volunteering rather than concessions we were pushed to:

We hold no National Stock Number and no CoTCCC listing. Neither is available to us.

Our manufacturing quality system is certified to ISO 13485 (UL/UKAS certificate 172692.240327). That is a quality-management certification. It is not a product approval, and we do not present it as one.

Our sterilisation is by irradiation to ISO 11137, with dosimetric release. One practical consequence: there is no ethylene oxide residual to test against ISO 10993-7, because no ethylene oxide is used.

QuikClot, Combat Gauze, Celox and ChitoGauze are registered trademarks of their respective owners. We reference them here to identify the products under discussion. We do not make, distribute or represent them.

If your requirement is a specified stock number or a listed product, buy the branded product. We will tell you that at the enquiry stage rather than after the purchase order. A disqualified bid costs you a tender cycle and costs us a reference, and neither is worth one container.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does QuikClot Combat Gauze expire, and where is the expiration date?

Yes, and the reason it does is worth understanding before you write it into a contract. Every sterile hemostatic dressing carries an expiry tied to its sterile barrier rather than to the kaolin, which is a mineral and does not degrade on a warehouse shelf. Expired Combat Gauze is therefore not chemically spent. It has lost its sterility claim, which is a documentation failure rather than a clinical one, and which is exactly why nobody will accept it into a controlled kit. Does Combat Gauze expire in the sense buyers usually mean? The pouch does. The clay does not. What ages is the vacuum-sealed pouch. The QuikClot Combat Gauze expiration date is printed on that pouch, and QuikClot Combat Gauze shelf life is quoted by vendors in years rather than months. When buying in quantity, write a minimum remaining shelf life into the purchase order. Three or four years on a five-year product is a reasonable ask and a common point of dispute when it is left unstated.

Combat Gauze vs Combat Gauze LE: what actually differs?

Packaging and distribution channel. The LE version is the same 3″ × 4 yd kaolin gauze, vacuum-sealed, with an X-ray detectable strip, packaged for law enforcement and EMS rather than military logistics. Vendors list it at roughly $44–55 against about $62 for the military Z-folded item.

Can generic kaolin gauze be used for wound packing the same way?

Clinically the technique is identical: pack tightly onto the bleeding source, hold firm pressure for at least 3 minutes, and do not remove the packing to inspect it. Three caveats. Confirm the product is sterile and individually sealed. Confirm whether it carries a radiopaque marker if your casualties enter a surgical pathway. Confirm the length, because a dressing sold as “wound packing gauze” at $4 is usually plain compressed gauze with no hemostatic agent at all — a legitimate product, but not this one.

Is a tourniquet better than hemostatic gauze?

They address different wounds. A limb tourniquet is first-line for compressible extremity bleeding and works faster than any dressing. Hemostatic gauze covers what a tourniquet cannot reach: junctional wounds at the groin, axilla and neck. It is also used as an adjunct when a tourniquet is being converted. Stocking one instead of the other is not a saving.

Is Combat Gauze safe for a patient on blood thinners?

Kaolin works by activating Factor XII in the patient’s own clotting cascade, so a patient who is significantly anticoagulant-impaired has less cascade to activate. Chitosan-based dressings such as Celox form a gel by charge interaction and work more independently of the cascade, which is why they are often preferred for anticoagulated patients, with the caveat that chitosan is crustacean-derived and a shellfish allergy should be checked where the history is available. That comparison deserves more room than a FAQ answer, and we treat it separately.

Why is QuikClot gauze so expensive?

Because you are usually buying the identity rather than the gauze. The kaolin, the rayon-polyester substrate and the vacuum pouch account for a small fraction of a $62 unit. The rest is sterility validation, regulatory and listing status, distribution rights, and twenty years of documented field use. Whether why it costs what it does justifies the price depends entirely on which of those four things your organisation is actually required to produce.

Related Articles

  1. Kaolin Hemostatic Gauze for Export Buyers, the procurement side of this article: MOQ, lead time, wholesale tiers, certification status and the full breakdown of what the brand premium buys. Read it when you have decided which identity you need and now need a price
  2. Kaolin Z-Folded Hemostatic Gauze, our own Z-fold specification, widths, packaging options and irradiation records
  3. Chitosan Hemostatic Gauze, the other agent. Read this one if your end users include anticoagulated patients, where chitosan’s cascade-independent mechanism is the stronger clinical argument
  4. What Is TCCC?, the framework behind the MARCH sequence, the 3-minute pressure rule and the CoTCCC recommendations quoted above

Sourcing kaolin hemostatic gauze in volume?

Tell us your required format (Z-fold or roll), your width and length, whether you need an X-ray detectable thread, and the minimum remaining shelf life your buyers will accept. You will get a specification sheet, our irradiation and dosimetric release records, and a quotation against your volume.

Request a Specification Sheet & Quotation →

About This Guide

Written by the technical team at Rusun Tacmed, a Chinese manufacturer of kaolin hemostatic gauze and TCCC-category trauma products, ISO 13485 certified (UL/UKAS 172692.240327). We manufacture products that compete with the dressings discussed here, which is a commercial interest readers should weigh. Where the published evidence does not favour us we have said so, and where a requirement rules us out we have said that too. Prices quoted are US retailer web listings captured on 30 July 2026 and will drift.

This article is written for procurement decisions. It is not clinical guidance and it is not a substitute for TCCC or Stop the Bleed training.

References & Sources

  1. Tactical Combat Casualty Care Guidelines, 1 May 2026 — Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care
  2. CoTCCC Recommended Devices and Adjuncts, 15 December 2021 — DLA nomenclature and National Stock Numbers
  3. Rall JM, Cox JM, Songer AG, Cestero RF, Ross JD. Comparison of novel hemostatic dressings with QuikClot combat gauze in a standardized swine model of uncontrolled hemorrhage. J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2013;75(2 Suppl 2):S150-6
  4. Causey MW, McVay DP, Miller S, Beekley A, Martin M. The efficacy of Combat Gauze in extreme physiologic conditions. J Surg Res. 2012;177(2):301-305
  5. QuikClot Combat Gauze LE product page — Teleflex / TacMed Solutions
  6. ISO 11137, sterilization of health care products by radiation
  7. ISO 13485, medical device quality management systems