There are many blood vessels in the mucous membrane on both sides of the nasal septum, especially in the lower part of the front where four branches of large blood vessels are interwoven into a network, forming a “bleeding zone”. The child’s nasal mucosa is delicate, rich in blood vessels and superficial, so it is easy to damage and cause bleeding, which is called epistaxis in medical science.
There are many causes of nasal bleeding, such as nasal trauma, nasal fracture, adjacent organ injury, nasal disease, cardiovascular disease, blood disease, coagulation dysfunction, nasal foreign body, violent cough, sinus surgery and nasal cannula, etc., which damage the mucous membrane of nasal blood vessels and cause nasal bleeding. In ENT clinics, there is no shortage of children who come to the hospital with their noses stuffed with cotton, soft cloth or paper towels or who bleed heavily just after stuffing their noses for a few hours. A small amount of nasal bleeding may not be harmful to a person’s health, but for repeated bleeding or acute hemorrhage, parents should take some measures to stop the bleeding before sending their children to the hospital to avoid excessive bleeding and life-threatening.
Therefore, it is important to learn the correct measures to stop bleeding.
1.When a small amount of blood is dripping, parents can use an ice pack or wet towel to apply cold compresses to the forehead and neck, or gargle with cold water and ice water to make the blood vessels contract and reduce bleeding.
2, the child’s nasal bleeding site is mostly in the location near the front nostril, where the vascular network is mainly concentrated in the mucous membrane layer of the nasal septum, which corresponds to our nasal wings, therefore, when the child’s nose bleeds, the most simple and convenient method to stop the bleeding is to compress the nose.
The specific operation is that parents use their thumb index finger to pinch both sides of the nose for about 10-15 minutes (if you determine which nostril bleeding can also be directly compressed bleeding nostril), many parents first thought of using paper towels to block, in fact, the pressure of paper towels is usually not enough, but also can not achieve the effect of stopping bleeding, and paper towels are not sterilized, easy to induce infection.
While compressing the nostrils, take a sitting position and lean your head slightly forward in order to spit out the blood from your mouth. Instead of letting the child lift his head, as many parents do, because when the child raises his head, the blood will be swallowed uncontrollably, stimulating the stomach and intestines causing nausea and vomiting, etc. Especially when the bleeding is large, the possibility of accidental aspiration will also occur.
3. If, after taking the above measures, the child’s nosebleeds still cannot be stopped, or if the child’s bleeding is heavy and accompanied by pale face, cold sweat, and rapid heart rate, etc., the child should be sent to the hospital promptly and ask the doctor to check whether there is serious bleeding so that timely treatment can be given. In addition, if your child has repeated nosebleeds, you should also go to the hospital to check if there is rhinitis, nasal foreign body, nasal nasopharyngeal tumor or blood disease.
4.During nosebleeds, do not eat hot food or hot drinks, you should eat some warm and cool diet rich in protein, vitamins and iron (such as rice juice, milk, juice, etc.), or eat some semi-liquid food (such as porridge, noodles, etc.), avoid tobacco, alcohol, spicy and stimulating and hard food, and eat more fresh vegetables and fruits.
5, in the dry season, the possibility of nosebleeds in children will increase, therefore, in the dry season, you can put some humidifiers at home, and let children more hydration.
6, repeatedly picking the nose is likely to damage the nasal mucosa, so parents should educate their children to develop good habits of not digging their nostrils.