Hot water, a boiling kettle or a pan, burning drinks - all this is fraught with danger for humans, especially for babies. If you inadvertently turned dishes with hot liquid on yourself, the main thing is to act correctly. Otherwise, the consequences of improper first aid can be even more dire and painful than the injury itself.
Children explore the world without suspecting danger
Especially often, children who explore the world around and cannot assess the dangers of their actions turn out dishes with boiling water. Burns with boiling water in children under five years of age account for 80 percent of all burns. And the area of skin damage in children is much wider than with a similar wound in adults. Also, babies often burn their face, neck, chest. And such wounds pose a danger to life, because eyes, respiratory organs, and the oral cavity can be affected. While parents turned away literally for a moment, children can take a sip of hot tea, and often get burns of the tongue with boiling water. At the same time, breathing is difficult, the victim begins to cough, the voice becomes hoarse.
Not only from boiling water
You can get a burn not only from boiling liquid. Very hot tap water can cause this injury if it affects the skin for a long time.
The treatment for burns with boiling water depends on what you burned. Remember that pure hot water does less harm than if you spilled sweet tea or brine on yourself.
Determine the degree of injury
There are four degrees of burns with boiling water. Doctors advise: before providing first aid, you need to determine how severe your burn is. At each degree, certain signs are observed.
If you are slightly burned, the skin turns red, it becomes a little swollen. You will feel pain in the place where the boiling water hit. But there will be no blisters on the skin with minor damage. All of these symptoms disappear quickly enough even without the use of drugs. Such a burn will not leave a mark on your skin.
Here's what a hand burn looks like boiling water of the first degree.
If blisters appear a few minutes after skin contact with hot liquid, then you have a second degree burn. These bubbles are filled with liquid, it is transparent, with a yellowish tinge. During the day, new blisters may appear on the wound, and old ones become even larger. The burned place hurts a lot. The epidermis perishes and exfoliates. A spot remains at the wound site, which usually heals in 10-12 days. It takes several months, sometimes the process of tissue regeneration is delayed to six months.
Call a doctor immediately
A burn with boiling water with blisters, skin necrosis, the formation of a scab are wounds of the third and fourth degrees. Remember that this is an occasion to immediately seek medical help. With the third degree, many blisters appear. With such an injury, the skin is very severely and deeply affected. The wound is bright red. The victim feels very severe pain. This degree is characterized by the death of tissues. Scabs appear in their place, they are painted in gray or black. It depends on how much boiling water has damaged the skin, whether the scar will remain or not. At the 3rd degree, the scar will not remain in place of the wound. But those who are unlucky to get a 3rd degree burn of type B, later, you may need to consult doctors to remove the traces. Sometimes the patient may even need an epidermal transplant.
The worst consequences will be from fourth-degree burns. You can get it with prolonged contact with boiling water. In this case, all layers of the skin die, along with them, subcutaneous fatty tissue dies. It happens that with a severe burn, muscles suffer, tendons and even bones die. It is worth recalling that with such a burn with boiling water, first aid should be provided as soon as possible. Call an ambulance immediately. The victim may die from pain shock. Recovery after receiving such a wound is very long and painful, lasting several months. Non-healing ulcers and scars are the consequences of deep burns.
You can cool, oil - no
No one is safe from injuries and injuries. And, most likely, there is no such person who at least once in his life did not receive them. Therefore, you need to know how to provide first aid for burns with boiling water. Remember the symptoms that are described above. They will be needed to help the victim, treatment of burns with boiling water at home should begin immediately.
The first thing to do is stop panicking! So you only make the situation worse. Gather yourself, turn off emotions, turn on your mind and act: the sooner you take action, the less chance of complications.
Be sure to remove the clothes, otherwise it will stick to the burned skin. If you can’t remove things, you need to carefully cut them, if possible. If the tissue adheres to the wound, then do not try to separate the tissue from the skin. Just trim the clothes around the burn.
If hot liquid gets on your skin, cool it as soon as possible. You can pour cool water on a skin area, blow it over with a fan or cover it with ice packs, after wrapping them with a clean ironed cloth. Please note: water should not be lower than twelve degrees. Icy water can cause shock in the victim.
The fact is that even when the action of the damaging factor - boiling water - ceases, the process of tissue destruction continues anyway. And under the influence of cold, you can stop further skin damage. You can cool the burn with water for twenty minutes. The damaged part of the body should be raised to prevent the appearance of edema.
But if you received a burn of the third or fourth degree, then rinsing the damaged skin with cold water is strictly prohibited. Tap water is non-sterile, you can introduce an infection that will complicate further treatment.
Do not aggravate the situation.
Many unknowingly make a gross mistake in providing first aid - they lubricate the burned area with vegetable oil. But the skin temperature in the burn area under the influence of oil does not decrease. And under the oil film, microorganisms multiply very quickly. With the mind, choose ointments for burns with boiling water - they should not contain oils. Otherwise, you will only aggravate the clinical picture.
What else do doctors not recommend flushing burns with? As antiseptics, salt and soda solutions, urine, citric acid, and vinegar do not work. All these substances are not remedies for a burn with boiling water. They only irritate the skin. And after healing, even mild burns, washed with these funds, scars may remain on the skin.
Stop treating burns with alcohol products. That is, you should not treat the wound with iodine or brilliant green, wipe with tincture of calendula and any other. The potassium permanganate solution is also not suitable for the treatment of burns.
Do not listen to common folk recipes for treating burns. Do not use dairy products to cool the damaged area. They have many microorganisms that can get into the wound and infect it. Do not use toothpaste to relieve pain - such advice is also quite common on the World Wide Web.
Taking alcohol as an anesthetic is strongly discouraged. First of all, it will not bring you relief. Secondly, alcohol can react with drugs prescribed by the doctor, and this will lead to adverse reactions.
The victim should be given a drink of warm green or black tea, but not alcohol. With burns, a plentiful drink is necessary - this will avoid intoxication of the body.
Be sure to remove the jewelry
In case of a burn with boiling water, treatment should begin immediately. If hot water gets on your skin and jewelry, you need to remove watches, rings, chains, bracelets and other items as soon as possible. If this is not done, the consequences can be very serious. Remember that burnt skin swells quickly. And if you do not remove the pressure jewelry, then blood circulation may be impaired, and in the worst case scenario, tissue necrosis may even develop.
Now you know what to do with a burn of boiling water in the first place. These measures will help relieve pain, and subsequently avoid serious complications.
Do not touch the blisters!
A major mistake in providing first aid for a burn is to pierce the resulting bubbles with liquid. Even if they are tense, you should never touch the blisters. Some folk healers advise to pierce a needle and pierce a bubble with it. In no case do this! You can bring the infection into an open wound. After all, you don’t need any undesirable consequences, right?
Medicines must be at hand.
What remedies for a burn with boiling water should be in a home medicine cabinet?
Almost every apartment has a painkiller. You can drink Nise, Paracetamol, Ibuprofen, or another analgesic. Take the pill, after half an hour the pain will subside.
The burn site should be treated with Panthenol spray. This is a modern drug in the form of an aerosol. Apply a small amount of the product on the skin, this will reduce swelling and pain. Also, the medicine accelerates tissue regeneration.
With a first-degree burn, such treatment is enough.
Cream "ARGOSULFAN ® " promotes the healing of abrasions and small wounds. The combination of the antibacterial component of silver sulfathiazole and silver ions helps to provide a wide range of antibacterial action of the cream. You can apply the drug not only to wounds located in open areas of the body, but also under dressings. The tool has not only a wound healing, but also an antimicrobial effect, and in addition, promotes wound healing without a rough scar 1 .
Perfectly heals wounds and reduces the inflammatory process "Solcoseryl". Instead of Pantenol spray, Bepanten gel can be used. There are other analogues - all preparations contain the same active substance. By the way, Panthenol and Solcoseryl can also be used for sunburn. Therefore, do not forget about these medicines when packing your suitcase on vacation.
Another great remedy that you should definitely have in a home medicine cabinet is a gel with sea buckthorn "Olazol".
Outdoor and indoor ways
There are two ways to treat burns. If injury and further infection of the wound are excluded, then an open method is used. The damaged area is not covered with a bandage - in this case, the skin breathes and regenerates faster. There is no need to dress the wound, which means that the skin will not suffer when removing dressings.
If the victim is not sure that he will be able to avoid contamination of the wound, then it is better to use a closed method of treatment. A bandage with ointment is applied to the burn. You can use the drugs described above.
For first aid for burns, gel wipes are developed, which should also be in your medicine cabinet. It is forbidden to use a regular bandage or gauze, adhesive, cotton wool - these materials can stick to a damaged surface and aggravate the situation. And gel wipes disinfect the wound and reduce pain. After that, these wipes can be easily separated from the burn without damaging the skin.
For the treatment of burns in young children, a closed method is always used. After all, children are mobile and can very easily infect a wound.
In case of severe burns, call an ambulance
Treats at home burns with boiling water only the first degree, sometimes the second. It is always worth considering the severity of damage and the area of the wound. If a child received a burn, then a doctor should be consulted immediately. In case of severe burns, pain shock may occur. Cases are described when people died because of him, even if the burns were small.
Burns of the third and fourth degree are treated only in the hospital. Moreover, in large cities, burn departments were even created. This indicates the serious consequences of such wounds.
Scars and scars may remain from burns.
What to do with a burn of boiling water, sorted out. But, after you have been helped