Last week we discussed how you can prevent, identify, and treat, heat related injuries as we start our march into the summer months. This week I wanted to focus on life threatening bleeding. For those of you that are squeamish, it’s OK! None of the pictures in this blog are graphic, plus, they’re all fake injuries. That means its all just corn syrup and food coloring.
How to Identify Life Threatening Bleeding
According to the American College of Surgeons, bleeding is the #1 cause of death post-accident or injury. In fact, with a deep laceration to a major artery or vein, death can come in just minutes. Which is why it is imperative that you gain the ability to recognize life-threatening bleed and act quickly to effectively control the bleeding at its source.
Life threatening bleeding is defined as any bleeding that is continuous, voluminous, pooling or spurting as a result of an accident or injury. This bleeding can come from anywhere in/on the body but is commonly found and easily treatable when it occurs on the extremities and junctional areas. Uncontrolled bleeding can also occur to the body in the Thoracic or Abdominal Cavities; however, these are extremely difficult to treat without specialized equipment, knowledge and team based treatment.
How to Treat Life Threatening Bleeding
First things first. Always establish your own personal safety prior to helping an injured person.
- If the injury is due to an active assailant, either wait until the area is clear, or if safe, move that injured person to safety prior to providing treatment. Same goes for traffic accidents and really any other scenario.
- If possible use Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), doing your best to keep the other persons blood out of your eyes, nose, mouth or any wounds that you may have.
- Follow up with your own medical provider to let them know about your potential personal exposure.
The best ways to effectively treat a life threatening bleed is through the use of Direct Pressure, Wound Packing, and the use of a Tourniquet.
Direct Pressure
Using a clean cloth or bandage, take just enough material to cover the injury and apply a ton of pressure to the site of the injury. I mean all the pressure that you can manage to apply. If the pressure stops the bleeding, keep the pressure on the injury until EMS arrives and takes over. If the bleeding stops, DO NOT RELEASE PRESSURE, wait for EMS to arrive.
Wound Packing
This method is really for large and deep wounds where superficial pressure is not effective. These wounds can be caused by cuts (lacerations), avulsions, gunshot wounds and any number of other trauma injuries.
With wound packing, you simply take some gauze (bonus points if it is hemostatic gauze), and start feeding it into the wound. The goal is to push the material into wound until you fill the wound cavity, and then use any excess material to provide direct pressure, as discussed above.
Tourniquets
Tourniquets are my go to for any bleeding injury on the extremities. Unless I know that the bleeding will be easily controlled using direct pressure, I immediately just use a tourniquet. Tourniquets are applied 1-2 inches above the site of the bleeding, and NOT on junctional sites or joints. Additionally, a tourniquet should be applied to an UPPER extremity, such as a thigh or bicep. Once you have applied the Tourniquet, you simply give the windlass 2-3 turns, secure the windlass in the strap, mark the time, and send the person to the hospital.
How to Become Properly Trained
Nearly all the information for todays blog came directly from the instructor’s guide for our Stop the Bleed course. Even so, this post barely scratches the surface of bleeding control and care as there is only so much information that I can effectively convey in a blog post. As such, we offer the American College of Surgeons Committee on Traumas’ Stop The Bleed course on a weekly basis at our Frederick training location. Whether you take the course from EMP2C, or through another organization (www.stopthebleed.org) , I highly encourage everyone that I meet to take this course. If you are interested in taking this or any other course that we offer, please don’t hesitate to check out www.emp2c.com/firstaidtraining or reach out to us at any of the options listed on our website!
If you want to be prepared but don't have the equipment, check out www.emp2c.com/shop to view our Pocket First Aid and Bleed Stop Kits!
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