How Do I Stop the Bleeding?

Stopping bleeding is the first rule in active bleeding, whether you are treating yourself or someone else. The first maneuver is to apply force to the wound. If this doesn’t work or we can’t put enough pressure on it to stop it, we use a tourniquet. There are tourniquets of suitable and resistant material that are good to have at home, but a tourniquet can be made from any cloth that can be tied tightly around the patient’s limb. Shoelaces, straps, shirt sleeves, gloves, and other materials can be used. In the figure above, you can see an improvised tourniquet with black plastic tape on a patient with a traumatic amputation of the distal phalanx of the finger. The tourniquet should go over the wound. If there is a lot of blood, try cleaning it with alcohol or hydrogen peroxide to locate the bleeding injury. Then begin tightening the tourniquet until the bleeding stops or is controlled as much as possible. It is believed that leaving a tourniquet in place for more than 40 minutes caused irreversible damage to the limb. However, current guidelines for dealing with vascular trauma indicate that the benefits of keeping the patient alive outweigh the damage that can occur from leaving the tourniquet in place for more than 40 minutes. Some arteries have so much pressure that they are very difficult to control even with a tourniquet. In the figure, you can see techniques to block the bleeding in these arteries.

Neeta Lind, CC BY 2.0

Zvitaliy

With a vascular injury, the only tool we have at home is the one described above. By stopping the bleeding or removing the blockage by lining up a fracture, you will gain important time until the emergency team arrives.

Vascular injuries are life-threatening, so don’t put off calling 911.