When a surgeon recommends a tetanus shot, many people are filled with incomprehension. It is just a glass stab, a small wooden thorn in the flesh, there is a need to make such a fuss? I don’t know, some wounds look small, if not handled carefully, will cause big trouble for you in the future. Because some special small wounds must be played tetanus. The three basic conditions for a tetanus shot The simple criteria for determining whether you need a tetanus shot are: the depth of the wound and what object caused it. When the wound is so deep that it needs stitches, or when it receives some more serious trauma, such as nails, wood, thorns and other sharp substances of the piercing, lacerations, bleeding, such a deep and thin wound, it is a breeding ground for tetanus bacilli. Smaller external wound opening, the wound is filled with necrotic tissue, blood clots, or filled too tightly, local ischemia, etc., it forms a hypoxic environment suitable for the growth and reproduction of tetanus bacteria. If there is also an aerobic bacterial infection, the latter will consume the oxygen remaining in the wound, making tetanus more likely to occur. The doctor explained that the conditions that need to be present at the same time for tetanus infection are: 1, open tissue injury with deep wounds. 2, invaded by external tetanus clostridium tetani. 3, there is inactivated tissue in the wound or local tissue ischemia and hypoxia. It can be seen that superficial wounds usually do not develop tetanus infection. Simple surface abrasions, after timely debridement treatment, it is not necessary to play tetanus injection for prevention. Human bites also require tetanus shots Overexcitement can expose a person’s primitive instincts, which gives rise to the phenomenon of human bites occurring. Many people think it doesn’t matter after a human bite and don’t clean and disinfect the wound, so they are prone to wound infection. Doctors say that it is necessary to get a tetanus vaccine after being bitten to prevent wound infection. Because human bites are also animal bites, for insurance purposes, rabies vaccine is also required after a human bite to prevent wound infection. What are the consequences of not getting a tetanus shot for a human bite? The consequences are serious. A few days ago, a middle-aged man in Nanjing, Mr. Cao was bitten by his own brother and his wound became infected with osteomyelitis, nearly amputating his leg. There are more than 1,000 kinds of bacteria in the human mouth, there are negative bacteria, positive bacteria, but also anaerobic bacteria, after the bite is easy to spread, the more omnivorous animals, the more complex the flora. And people eat both meat and plants, so among all bites, human bites are the most serious, more serious than any other animal bites. Tetanus vaccine and tetanus shot Strictly speaking, tetanus vaccine and tetanus shot are essentially one for prevention and the other for treatment. The tetanus antitoxin, which is given after an injury, is a therapeutic drug. The tetanus vaccine, on the other hand, is for preventive immunization. In case of future injury, there is no need for tetanus toxoid or antitoxin if the body has reached a certain level of tetanus antibodies that are sufficient for protection. However, the antibodies in the body of a person who has had a tetanus vaccination may weaken or even disappear after a period of time, and may not provide the protection that they should. To be on the safe side, your doctor will recommend a toxoid injection. To be precise, tetanus is not an infectious disease and is not contagious. It can only be caused by trauma and is included in the immunization program due to its high fatal rate. Timetable for tetanus shots Doctors usually recommend tetanus shots for patients within 24 hours, the principle being and the earlier the better. However, for various reasons some injured patients do not get tetanus shots within 24 hours. For this reason many people feel that tetanus prophylaxis is no longer meaningful for injuries that are older than 24 hours. The surgeon’s attitude to this view is that the incubation period of tetanus bacillus infection is 3-21 days, usually 7 days. Depending on its pathogenesis, prophylaxis is effective when symptoms are not yet present, although spasm toxin binding to nerve receptors is irreversible. Therefore, tetanus prophylaxis is necessary for even patients who are seen very late after soft tissue injury. KK tip: Tetanus prophylaxis includes active immunization (tetanus toxoid antigen) and passive immunization (tetanus antivenom and tetanus immunoglobulin). For clean or lightly contaminated wounds, only tetanus toxoid can be injected without tetanus immunoglobulin, while for more severely contaminated wounds, both tetanus toxoid and tetanus immunoglobulin are recommended.