Many soft-tissue and muscle/bone/joint injuries need dressings, bandaging, and splinting to help control bleeding, lessen pain, prevent infection, and provide support to an injured area.
Basics
A first aid responder must know how to identify and use various dressings, bandages, and splints.
Dressings
Gauze pads
A dressing is a sterile covering for a wound, designed to absorb fluids, slow bleeding, lessen pain, prevent infection, and promote healing. Typically, a dressing for first aid care consists of a square pad of loosely woven cotton gauze. This type of material is porous enough to allow two-way airflow while absorbing exudate and preventing dirt and other contaminants from reaching the wound bed. Gauze can also be impregnated with medication or antiseptic chemicals.
- Sterile gauze pads come individually packaged in squares of various sizes (e.g., 2×2-inch, 3×3-inch, 4×4-inch, 10×30-inch, 20×40-cm, etc.). Larger gauze pads are sometimes called trauma dressings or multi-trauma dressings. Since these dressings are sterile, they can be used in first aid emergencies to cover open wounds as you apply direct pressure or a pressure bandage.
- Probably the most common first aid dressing is the little square in the center of a BAND-AID® or other adhesive bandage (e.g., Curad®, etc.)
Occlusive dressing for a sucking chest wound
Other types of dressings include moist-wound dressings and occlusive dressings.
- Moist-wound dressings (including alginates, foams, hydrocolloids, hydrogels, and transparent films) are sterile coverings designed to keep used to promote healing for burns and chronic wounds like leg and foot ulcers. As such, they are more common in hospital and hospice treatment and less common as initial first aid care. However, moist trauma dressings are recommended as the initial covering for eviscerations encountered in the field.
- Occlusive dressings airtight, nonabsorbent seals made of plastic, latex, or gauze immersed in petroleum jelly, used to seal open chest wounds, to cover the moist gauze layer of an evisceration, or to maximize the potency and absorption of an applied topical medication sealed under the dressing.
Bandages
A bandage is a strip of material used to protect, immobilize, compress, or support a wound or injured body part. When a dressing covers a wound, a bandage can hold the dressing in place. (The adhesive parts surrounding the small square dressing of a BAND-AID is the bandage. For this reason, BAND-AIDs, Curad strips, etc. are considered adhesive bandages.)
A few different types of bandages used in first aid emergencies are listed below:
- Adhesive bandages (e.g., BAND-AID, Curad, Elastoplast, Nexcare, etc.). Commonly referred to as “band-aids” in the U.S. and as “plasters” in the U.K., adhesive bandages are ideal for minor wounds and home/first aid care. They are self-contained, individually wrapped (sterile), easily applied, dressing-bandage combinations, available in different sizes and shapes for various parts of the body.
- Compression or elastic bandages (e.g., ACE™ bandage, etc.). Elastic bandages are designed to provide support for injured body parts with customized compression where needed. They are comfortable to wear for extended periods, easy to use, and adjustable for a custom fit.
- Cravat bandages.
- Gauze bandages.