eli5 : why do ordinary soldiers carry multiple tourniquets but tourniquets are mostly not used in civilian first aid?
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You should only use a tourniquet if you are willing to sacrifice that limb to save the person’s life.
Remember, you are blocking blood flow to the limb, so that tissue will eventually die from lack of blood flow.
The limb *might* survive, if you are very careful to loosen the tourniquet every few minutes to allow some blood flow, but then the patient might bleed out.
I think it is because tourniquets are fairly extreme and can cause other damage.
In civillian life you don’t get that kind of injuries very often at all and help is usually a lot closer.
When I was a teenager, I can remember tourniquets being glossed over in my Boy Scout First Aid training, but basically regarded as a last ditch effort to keep someone from bleeding to death even if it meant likely losing the limb. That attitude is still held by some, but increasingly it is being regarded as an outdated notion that limb loss is a necessary or even likely result of proper TQ use. Generally if you can get the patient to more advanced care reasonably quickly, amputation can be avoided.
Unfortunately, however, there is still a connection in the general public’s mind that tourniquets = amputation. Which means that many would-be first aiders are reluctant to use them even if one is available, and many patients are highly resistant to having one applied even though it will save their life!
It’s not the fault of the folks offering First Aid training – HSI (formerly ASHI) and the American Red Cross both offer instruction on the proper use of tourniquets as part of their First Aid certification courses. The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) curriculum (intended for civilian use) does too. I suppose you can blame it partially on the fact that some people get trained and then go 20 or 30 years without ever getting themselves recertified, so they aren’t aware that best practices may have changed. And so they pass that misinformation around.
In any event, I’m a civilian, I’m First Aid certified, and yes, I carry a CAT as part of my day-to-day kit.
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