Past Tense

Posts Tagged ‘lacerations’

If your planning a hike or bike into the backwoods, you’ll have to plan for minor accidents. Inevitably, someone will fall and cut a knee, scalp or elbow. Lacerations can be initially treated in the field, but if it’s a serious one, you should seek treatment from a medical professional. The following is a pre-hospital field dressing technique that you can use until you get help.

The first thing to do, is to control bleeding. A little bleeding is actually OK, as long as it is a slow, minor bleed. In addition, minor bleeding can help to push out dirt and bacteria. If the bleeding is pulsed or streaming, or spurting out of the wound, then the wound is deep and the rapid control of the loss of blood is important. A little bleeding isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and it pushes out bacteria and foreign bodies that can cause an infection.

Try to get out the sand, twigs, pebbles and debris if you can, then apply direct pressure. Do this with a pressure dressing as shown. This technique works on small cuts as well as large lacerations. You can even do this with some strips of clean cloth, (not a tourniquet!) Pressure alone will always work to stop bleeding. Wounds on the scalp or anywhere, can be treated in the same way.

Resist the temptaton to keep peeking at the wound to see if the bleeding has stopped, as this will only pull off the newly formed clot and make bleeding persist! When the first cloth gets blood soaked, just put another right on top of it and keep holding pressure. If bleeding is not controlled after 15 minutes, head to the ER.

When bleeding has stopped, you can look at the wound and decide whether you need to go to the ER. Stitches, if you need it, have to be done within 6-8 hours. How can you tell whether it needs stitches? In short, if the wound wants to stay open, or pop open with simple movement, it needs stitches!