I heard people say that if you or someone got stabbed, you shouldn’t take out the knife. but why? isn’t it better to take it out?
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The knife plugs the hole. This prevents you from bleeding out, which is what usually kills you if you get stabbed. [Here’s an example clip](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vuKztSUfN4w).
If the knife penetrated a large blood vessel it could also be plugging the hole it made. If you remove the plug the blood escapes and the person dies.
The knife may be serving as a plug of sorts keeping blood from spurting out. If you remove the knife without being in a position to stem any increased bleeding, you could hasten the victim’s death from blood loss.
Not always, but a lot of the time, the knife being removed will make things worse in terms of damage, bleeding, and overall things shifting around. It will be removed immediately before medical treatment at a time when it can be immediately treated with all tools available. I’m almost no cases will removing the knife make the situation better. So it’s more of a high risk low reward situation.
I’m no expert, but I would say it’s for two reasons:
1) When you pull it out, it cuts again on the way out
2) When the knife cuts, it slightly blocks the cut vessels while it is inside, so the bleeding is less, that’s why when it’s pulled out blood tends to gush out and splatter
The biggest issue with getting stabbed is the blood loss. So the primary first aid for someone who have gotten stabbed is to contain their bleeding. This might be more important then doing CPR as you can not pump blood around the body if it is not there. The knife is in the perfect position to help reduce any bleeding. It forms a perfect plug for the wound it just created. A lot of tissue will push around the knife and contain the bleeding. If you remove the knife then you will be left with a wide open knife shaped hole which can be hard to plug. Another issue is that the knife is still a sharp object and might even be serrated. Pulling it out might cause it to cut open more flesh causing more damage then it initially did.
It is not as simple though. In most situations it is best to leave the knife in the wound, so if you are unsure this is what you need to do, there are situations where this can cause issues. If the tissue around the knife have to move around the knife might end up cutting up more of the tissue creating a bigger wound. This might be an issue if the knife is close to the lungs or heart, or if the victim needs to be moved in order to be rescued to a hospital. But in these cases you need medical professionals to look at the situation and make decisions.
If you pull it out, there is no longer anything to stop the cut/stabbed area bleeding full pelt. Keeping it in also allows doctors to remove it safely, taking it out wrong could kill them.
edit:If you want to see how something similar works, there’s an experiment you can try at home with adult supervision. (pre-edit:You can test this yourself real easily!)
Take a plastic bottle filled with water, and then stab it with a knife or pin. Watch how much water leaks out. And then take the knife out of the bottle. Now that the water doesn’t need to go *around* the knife, it can go straight out of the bottle and this happens faster than before!
Also, in any wound situation, why do you need to remove foreign objects? The reason: so that when the wound heals and is closed there isn’t any infection. The timeline for infections: days to months after the wound. The timeline for bleeding out: seconds to minutes (or hours with some proper first aid).
The knife plugs the hole it makes. If it opened an artery, removing it will kill you via blood loss, most likely.
Not only it is blocking blood flow as others have pointed out, but it can be blocking flow of deadly infection, such as if a bowel has been perforated.
Also, not all knife blades are straight. Pull up on the wrong blade, and you will do additional damage to the person on the way out. Medical personnel can do imaging to determine what kind of blade it is, which organs and vessels it threatens, and carefully extract it with clamps in hand and with antibiotics at the ready.
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