GotoAID - Swollen, Painful, Deformed Limb

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Swollen, Painful, Deformed Limb

Prompt recognition and immediate care for limb injuries can help reduce pain, prevent further injury, and limit permanent damage.Distinguishing between injuries to bones, muscles, or joints is often difficult. It is best to treat them all as possible fractures.

Symptoms

Pain or tenderness	Grating or exposed bone
Open wound, obvious bleeding	Guarding (non-use or rigid positioning)
Swelling, deformity	Loss of movement or function
Discoloration, bruising

Steps

Expose the injury site by gently cutting or tearing away clothing.

Control active bleeding with gentle direct pressure around bone or injury site.

Cover any open wounds with clean absorbent pads.

Use padding to fill gaps underneath the limb

Gently place your hands above and below the injury site to immobilize the limb in the position it is found.

Apply a cold source to reduce pain and swelling. Place a thin towel or cloth between the cold source and skin to prevent cold-related problems and limit the application to 20 minutes or less.

Comfort, calm, and reassure the person.

Warnings

Be safe! Make sure repeated injury does not occur.

Do not straighten a painful, swollen, or deformed arm or leg.

Do not allow the person to put weight on a leg, ankle, or foot injury.

Do not push a bone back under the skin.

Do not remove shoes or boots unless there is severe bleeding from the foot.

Tips

Always activate EMS for a serious limb injury or if you are in doubt about its severity.

If EMS is unavailable or you elect to move the person, splint the affected body part first.

Splints are commercially available but can easily be improvised.

An effective splint is made up of three components: 1) Something rigid to provide external stability. Common items include another part of the body, compressed pillow, cardboard, folded magazine, and wood slat. 2) Something soft to fill and support the contoured gaps around joints and bony ridges. Common items include pads, towels, coats, pillows and blankets. 3) Something to bind the limb, rigid material, and padding together into a stable external support. Common items include roller bandage, tape, folded cloth, belts, and rope.

The basic rules to follow when splinting are: splint the limb in the position found; in addition to the injury site, immobilize the joint above and the joint below the injury with the splint; after splinting, check frequently for swelling, paleness, or numbness. If necessary, loosen the splint.

Fractures in young children are different from those in adults, because the bone is softer and more able to bend. Instead of breaking completely through when an injury occurs, the bone buckles and cracks. This is called a “greenstick fracture” (like breaking a fresh, green branch).

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