stitching up a wound..... what would one need to know?

Random04 said:
Don't use cotton thread next time. If it's not contaminated already (because the alcohol didn't kill everything), it will wick nasty bugs deep inside where they LOVE to grow and get into your blood. Keep it covered and clean. If it goes red, RUN to the hospital before they have to take your hand.
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will do. I promise.
 
Its not a good thing to do, BUT, doing what you did was a pretty common thing in the old days.

One thing you should do is pull the stitches immediately, and do not use alcohol for a sterilizing agent. Go buy some betadine at the drug store and soak down the whole spot and then clip and pull the stitches.

Things to look for;

any redness at all around the wound, and ESPECIALLY if you see the redness extending UP the arm.

Any stiffness, warmth, swelling, or pain anywhere else in your body, and in the arm, particularly in the inside of wrist, inside of elbow or under arm.

ANY FEVER and get thee to the medical professional immediately.




If in the future you need to do this again, get betadine, use dental floss, and do not stitch it shut but leave room for the body to excrete any junk left inside.
 
just read this one....AAHHHHHH!!!! apply direct pressure and elevate if nec. get to a doctor asap and get a tetanus shot.
 
Guntotin_fool said:
Its not a good thing to do, BUT, doing what you did was a pretty common thing in the old days.

One thing you should do is pull the stitches immediately, and do not use alcohol for a sterilizing agent. Go buy some betadine at the drug store and soak down the whole spot and then clip and pull the stitches.

Things to look for;

any redness at all around the wound, and ESPECIALLY if you see the redness extending UP the arm.

Any stiffness, warmth, swelling, or pain anywhere else in your body, and in the arm, particularly in the inside of wrist, inside of elbow or under arm.

ANY FEVER and get thee to the medical professional immediately.




If in the future you need to do this again, get betadine, use dental floss, and do not stitch it shut but leave room for the body to excrete any junk left inside.
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thanks man. So if I were building my first aid kit for my BOB, I should get betadine and dental floss? BTW I already removed them and cleaned with peroxide and put iodine on it. Then I glued it. Think that is ok? like I said earlier, I'll go to the EMS base if I think anything is wrong. I'm a firefigher and I know them and they'll prolly just say go to the doc but I trust them reguardless.
 
In an emergency situation, I would go to the doctor!

But let's assume there is no doctor available: then it is not a very good idea to stitch up most injuries UNLESS it is a very clean cut. So ASSUMING your razor was clean, I would say the best things to do are as follows:

Short term: tape sterile gauze over it - after all, you are in a survival forum, I assume you have at least minimal first aid supplies!

Once you are taped up and can work without getting blood everywhere, the ideal things to do are, in my opinion:

a) throw a needle in a pressure cooker and cook it good.*

b) clean some fishing line with soap and water and rinse it well.

c) boil a bit of water and put it in an irrigation syringe (I have several around which I use to lube my M14s, but I also have a couple in the first aid gear pile.)

d) take off the pad, irrigate the wound. Hopefully it bled all over the place, because then it's probably clean inside anyway. Also, you will not be so careless in the future.

e) stitch her up.

f) put another pad on it and tape it on good.

g) wear a glove at work, if you do a job that gets you dirty. I guess if you work in an office that might not be a problem - I'm an ironworker and it would be a problem for me for sure!


Last year I got an axe stuck in my leg and didn't want to pony up for the thousand dollar plus hospital bill, so I just drove to an old doctor's place and that's about what he did for me. In fact the first thing I did was drive to the closest town and go to their hospital, but when they gave me a "for starters" price I hopped back out. The nurse looked at me when I stumbled in with my leg all bloody and said in a sympathetic voice, "chainsaw?"
"Axe," I said "Common chainsaw injury?"
"My three brothers and my dad are in forestry," she said. "You have the look."

Anyway, my grandma knew an old doctor in the same town so I went there.
"Axe wound, eh?" he asked.
"Why...operating a hop-in clinic?" I asked. He cleaned me up, stitched me up, I watched for signs of infection, of which there were a couple, but not very bad, so I put hot packs on it every night for a few hours, reasoning that I could make a spot-fever that my body could never match. The infection went away after a week or two, and I took the stitches out when it was definitely completely closed. It took almost two months to be completely painless, though, which I attribute to the slightly primitive medical care.

*I guess if I didn't have a pressure cooker I would heat the needle up with a torch? But you know, I might just as likely wash it carefully with a scrub brush and soap and water. Also, I hope you had gloves on for handling everything once it was good and clean!
 
misanthropist said:
In an emergency situation, I would go to the doctor!

But let's assume there is no doctor available: then it is not a very good idea to stitch up most injuries UNLESS it is a very clean cut. So ASSUMING your razor was clean, I would say the best things to do are as follows:

Short term: tape sterile gauze over it - after all, you are in a survival forum, I assume you have at least minimal first aid supplies!

Once you are taped up and can work without getting blood everywhere, the ideal things to do are, in my opinion:

a) throw a needle in a pressure cooker and cook it good.*

b) clean some fishing line with soap and water and rinse it well.

c) boil a bit of water and put it in an irrigation syringe (I have several around which I use to lube my M14s, but I also have a couple in the first aid gear pile.)

d) take off the pad, irrigate the wound. Hopefully it bled all over the place, because then it's probably clean inside anyway. Also, you will not be so careless in the future.

e) stitch her up.

f) put another pad on it and tape it on good.

g) wear a glove at work, if you do a job that gets you dirty. I guess if you work in an office that might not be a problem - I'm an ironworker and it would be a problem for me for sure!


Last year I got an axe stuck in my leg and didn't want to pony up for the thousand dollar plus hospital bill, so I just drove to an old doctor's place and that's about what he did for me. In fact the first thing I did was drive to the closest town and go to their hospital, but when they gave me a "for starters" price I hopped back out. The nurse looked at me when I stumbled in with my leg all bloody and said in a sympathetic voice, "chainsaw?"
"Axe," I said "Common chainsaw injury?"
"My three brothers and my dad are in forestry," she said. "You have the look."

Anyway, my grandma knew an old doctor in the same town so I went there.
"Axe wound, eh?" he asked.
"Why...operating a hop-in clinic?" I asked. He cleaned me up, stitched me up, I watched for signs of infection, of which there were a couple, but not very bad, so I put hot packs on it every night for a few hours, reasoning that I could make a spot-fever that my body could never match. The infection went away after a week or two, and I took the stitches out when it was definitely completely closed. It took almost two months to be completely painless, though, which I attribute to the slightly primitive medical care.

*I guess if I didn't have a pressure cooker I would heat the needle up with a torch? But you know, I might just as likely wash it carefully with a scrub brush and soap and water. Also, I hope you had gloves on for handling everything once it was good and clean!
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Great story. Yeah... not so much on the gloves. I did have my beer goggles on though! that is sure to count for something.
 
You need to be VERY careful with cuts to the palmer aspect of the hand. Not only is there a lot of important things to damage (nerves, blood vessels, tendons, etc.) but infection can spread like wildfire along the palmer aponeurosis and tendons.
IMO this is not a job for the average GP.
 
DEAR SWEET LIGHT!!!!!!!

Generally, my take on this question is if you have to ask, you should seek professional attention while maintaining direct pressure, with elevation as needed. If that doesn't slow the bleeding, you need to have the professional attention come to you. If the bleeding is spurting, again, professional attention should come to you.

Everyone has wanted to sew themselves up since the first Rambo movie, probably longer. It's too easy to do it wrong if you don't know what you are doing. Most of the time, stitches are done to minimize scaring, not to keep the wound close. Doing it badly can worsen the scaring, resulting in loss of flexibility or pain in the long term; if too shallow, the stitches can pull out on thier own, making your wound look like a zipper under the fresh blood; too deep, you might damage nerves; and it can seal in all kinds of infection, starting with tetanus. *shakes head* Please, for all that is holy, tell me you used a curved needle, not a straight one that leads to tugging and tearing. And a really sharp one, not a dull as a butterknife straight sewing needle.

Get thy backside to a doc. Tell him you are stupid, and ask him if you screwed it up. That hand is too complicated to risk, and if you were 3/4" of an inch in you might have nerve, muscle or tendon damage that you have noticed yet becuase you aren't using it. And if you wait until it's healed to find out the hard way, you'll be kicking yourself for the rest of your life.
 
If the wound starts getting infected, you may have to
cut the suturing open and clean the wound. You then
may need to keep the wound un-sutured so that you
can keep removing dead tissue and puss: debridement.

You can google on debridement and find different ways,
I used gauze lightly rinsed in saline solution, pack lightly
in the wound. Tape the gauze in the wound, lightly.

How it works.
The puss and dead tissue will cling to the gauze, so you
remove the gauze leaving PINK (=healthy) tissue. Repack
with fresh saline-rinsed gauze. Repeat this 3 times daily.
As it heals, you can go to 2 times daily.

If you cause the wound to bleed through exercise,
change dressing immediately, because the blood is food
for bacteria.

Antibiotics are a good precaution, especially at first.
They can have side-effects.

Use your eyes, Pink tissue, almost bleeding but not quite,
or only bleeding very slightly, is good.
Yellow, grey, blue, green tissue is bad.

Swelling is another indicator of infection, but swelling may
not be noticeable in a putrid, infected wound.

I could also smell the condition of my wound.
Find someone in your household with a good nose; have
them smell near the wound (1-2 foot) on a regular basis.
If the wound is healthy, it will not smell, or it will
smell like fresh meat or blood. If the wound is going bad,
it will smell bad, rotten, putrid. If you forget to change the
dressing, the dressing may be causing the smell more than
the wound, so change the dressing immediately.

After removing a dressing, always look for bad tissue or puss,
and remove it. Repack with fresh dressing.

If the dressing or the wound looked or smelled especially bad,
then change more often, for awhile; and you will probably be OK.
Also be more vigilant, and remove bad tissue.

If the wound gets out of control, a surgeon or a surgical-wannabe,
like yourself, will have to scrape or even cut bad tissue away.
Tweezers are great for removing puss pockets and dead tissue.

I am not a health care professional. I learned the above in 2 ways.

1) Under the care of doctors, I did the above protocol to myself.
It worked.
The doctors decided that, if sutured, my wound would abscess.

2) A WWII corpsman described a similar method to me. He avoided
sutures, so he could let the deep wounds heal from the inside out.

Using the above protocol you will probably have a bigger scar.

Doctors are not so helpful for lots of diseases; but Doctors (surgeons)
are especially good at this stuff; so, go to one.
Nursing (changing dressings etc) can also be critical, depending on the
particular wound, so do not neglect this.

Good luck.
 
Hey Guys...

REI carrys wound closure kits..They are made by Doug Ritter I believe..
Nice little kit..
I snooped through an open one at the store...

Kit contains some ointment, several sutures, some Benzocaine( I think thats what it's called) to freeze the wound,, and some wound dressings..

I think something like this should be carried in a first aid kit if yo spend time in the bush away from Docs and hospitals...

I know one thing,, doing it with a plain ole needle must have Hurt like Hell...
Needles used for stitchs are cut on three sides,, so the go through the skin easier...

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
I cary 3 suture kits with me when I hike/camp.2 in my first aid kit and 1 in the front pouch of my spec-ops survival sheath.I like knives and I like walking far from civilization so it was a nesessity.
 
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I once fell into a broken beer glass, my whole thumb muscle was cut through.

Went to a hospital, and there they said i was lucky the glass missed all the importand stuff, i cud have lost function of my hand.
They sowed it up good. Didnt need antibiotics, it healed well without.

Now i just got a big scar there, and yeah i can still feel where it cut trough pretty well. But I'm glad my hand is still usable.

hands are delicate things
 
I have stitched up my hands, including my finger tips on a few occasions, and yes even used a straight sewing needle, though now I have actual kits.

Yes if you can you always go to a professional, but sometimes you can't and you need to weight the risk of infection against the immediate loss of use of the hand.

If you don't think it makes so much of a difference then tape up your dominant hand, don't use it at all and try all normal survival outdoor activities.

Stitches, properly done, can have even a fairly serious wound functional in a few days where you can use the hand again at least a little. And they can make cuts go from a month to a week in terms of healing speed.

That being said, there are other ways like steri-strips, or steri-strips reinforced with glue (on the ends of the strips, not in the wound).

-Cliff
 
ironraven said:
DEAR SWEET LIGHT!!!!!!!
Please, for all that is holy, tell me you used a curved needle, not a straight one that leads to tugging and tearing. And a really sharp one, not a dull as a butterknife straight sewing needle.

Get thy backside to a doc. Tell him you are stupid, and ask him if you screwed it up. That hand is too complicated to risk, and if you were 3/4" of an inch in you might have nerve, muscle or tendon damage that you have noticed yet becuase you aren't using it. And if you wait until it's healed to find out the hard way, you'll be kicking yourself for the rest of your life.
Click to expand...

LOL I don't want to lie to you though.

Ok, here's the update. The stiches are out, took them out last night. Everythings is still sealed well and I had no problems getting them out. I cleaned the surface agian and actually soaked my palm in some peroxide. It's now superglued with perpendicular strips of tape.

On another note, when I uncovered it, apparently my beer goggles made me remember it much larger than it is. It's only about 1.5" long. I swear I thought it like 3". I can't say about the depth because it closed, but it wasn't straight down, it went at we'll say a 30 deg angle. there is zero pain at all. it is a little pink around the first millimeter of the cut but it isn't even tender. If that pink gets any bigger I'll go to the doctor.
 
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