In a scene from The Blacklist, one of the characters uses a lighter on a wound to ācauterizeā it. It looks painful but works. What exactly is it and is it actually done in medical scenarios?
In: 97
Itās used to stop bleeding in an emergency by closing the wound. It doesnāt heal you, it just stops bleeding. Itās used if youāre losing a lot of blood so you donāt bleed out.
When I kept getting nosebleeds as a kid my nasal tissues were chemically cauterized by a wad of silver nitrate on a stick surgically jammed up my schnozz. Hurt like a bastard but the nosebleeds stopped
Not an expert, just have some sport and armed first aid training.
Tourniquet is first go to for major extremity wounds. Most scenarios it will be removed by doctors within an hour or two and will not cause any issues. If it is going to be longer than a few hours for help, like 2 day hike out of the woods, cauterizing a wound would be considered if you cannot control the bleed while being mobile with normal wound dressing. It changes the clock from how fast you will bleed out to how long will you fight infection. Itās a slower, but more painful way to die, but you might make it to medical staff in time to save your life. But first step in torso wounds, you should take is pack the wound, never remove the bandage if it is bleeding through, pack it until it stops. Removing the bandage pulls clotting out and can reopen wound. Pack and press, once bleeding is under control.
Watch Rambo III and see him use gunpowder in a bullet wound to seal it up tight. The scene was in a cave in Afghanistan and its not like he had access to medical so he had no choice and it worked. What the movie doesn’t show is how he must have had some serious pain later on with scar tissue and just waiting for the wound and the burn to heal properly.
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