Wilderness First Aid

**Beo** · 11-14-2007, 04:01 PM

So in the wilderness if injured you need to do First Aid, how do you do it?
Give'em to me people this is actually important, doesn't matter what the injury, broken bones, cuts, hyperthermia, heat stroke lets see what you got.

Wilderness first aid is the provision of first aid under conditions where the arrival of emergency responders or the patient evacuation may be delayed due to constraints of terrain, weather, and available persons or equipment. It may be necessary to care for an injured person for several hours or days.
In the United States and United Kingdom, Wilderness First Aid (WFA) is the name of a certification in wilderness medicine that covers wilderness first aid; depending on the laws applicable where it is practiced, it may impose specific responsibilities and confer specific immunities on duly-diligent practitioners. For instance, the practicing of certain rules of WFA, by someone certified in the usual "street" First Aid discipline but not in WFA (or a higher Wilderness Medicine qualification), could result in civil liability or perhaps even criminal prosecution.
A classic problem is whether to leave an injured person or stay if only one person is ambulatory. Barring special circumstances, the injured one should be stabilized, placed in shelter, and marked in a way visible from the air (usually a single, long line of cut brush or trampled snow). Then the injured one should be left alone, while the other goes for help.
If there are three or more, the healthy group should be split into halves by speed, with the fastest going for help, and the others remaining to make the preparations. (In a party of four, it would be a rare hiker who would be better sent for help alone, rather than sent in a sub-party of two.)
Ensuring the rescuers can find the injured person is crucial. If a Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon is available, it should be triggered and placed with the injured person. If enough help is available, air-visible markings may be worthwhile. Where surveyor's tape is available within the party (and assuming clear trails are available), it should be used by the sub-party going for help, to back up memory and notes with tape-flagging of the toward-the-injury-location choices of trail at intersections. (When an injury location is off clear trails, by distances that make it impractical to keep blazes of tape within sight of each other, forks in watercourses should be treated as substitutes for trail intersections.)
Training in wilderness first aid is available in the the US and UK. Any group of persons traveling in wilderness should have at least one person trained in wilderness first aid and carry a first aid kit designed for the area they are traveling in.
Nursing care is not part of normal first aid but is part of wilderness first aid.

**trax** · 11-14-2007, 04:05 PM

Include uses of natural medicines...if you're sure...if not warn people, what if youre out hiking with someone and he has a heart attack? Just a for instance.

Most first aid tips I'm thinking if the person knows first aid to begin with, start looking for substitutes from nature for the equipment they would have had in a good kit.

**Beo** · 11-14-2007, 04:11 PM

Exposure, sometimes called hypothermia, is a normal hazard of temperate wilderness. It occurs when a person's core body temperature falls below 33.7C (92.6F). If a person is wet, in a mild wind, it can occur in less than an hour at temperatures as high as 15°C (59°F).

The basic early symptoms are uncontrollable shivering, stiffness and confusion. The conclusive evidence is a cool or cold stomach. If the hypothermia has not yet advanced to a critical stage, basic treatment is to warm the person in a sleeping bag. People with hypothermia may have such depressed metabolisms that they can no longer heat themselves. However, if the hypothermia has become severe - the victim is confused or unconscious - it is critical not to warm them suddenly. Evacuation would be the preferred option, with warming undertaken in a controlled medical environment. Sudden warming of a severely hypothermic person can send the heart into a fatal, irregular beating pattern or arrhythmia.

**Beo** · 11-14-2007, 04:12 PM

Heat syncope: heat exhaustion or sunstroke
Both maladies tend to occur during heavy exercise in high humidity, or with inadequate water. Some chronically ill persons enter these state normally.
The basic symptom of heat syncope is a body temperature above 40°C (104°F) with fainting, or weakness but without mental confusion. If unconsciousness, confusion or convulsions are present, it is sunstroke which is rarer, but far more severe condition, a true medical emergency.
Note that some authorities do not distinguish heat syncope from sunstroke, and treat heat syncope as sunstroke in order to be safe. All authorities recognize that these are stages in the same process.
Heat syncope is caused by mild overheating with inadequate water or salt. In young persons, it is far more common than true sunstroke. Blood pressure is lowered when the body dilates (widens) capillaries (small blood vessels) in the skin to radiate heat. Also, water is evaporated from the blood, reducing the blood's volume and therefore lowering blood pressure further. The result is less blood to the brain, causing light-headedness and fainting.
The basic treatment for heat syncope is to treat it like fainting: Have the victim sit, if sitting lay down, if laying down, raise legs. Then, administer water, and oral rehydration salt, slowly, and move the victim to a cooler area.
With sunstroke, cool the victim. Remove their clothing, shade them, fan them and sponge with cool water. Massage limbs vigorously to move cooled blood into the body cavity. Ice or alcohol can cause damage. Get help immediately. Sunstroke, especially when the victim has been unconscious, often causes major damage to body systems such as brain, kidney, liver, gastric tract. Unconsciousness for more than two hours usually leads to permanent disability.

**Beo** · 11-14-2007, 04:14 PM

Most animal bites should be considered as possible sources of infection, including rabies. Wash the wound, ideally with povidone iodine soap. Loosely bandage it, and do not suture it. Know the venomous animals in your area.
Animal bites by carnivores other than rodents should be considered possible cases of Rabies. If you are bitten, try to capture alive or kill the animal and preserve its head. Look for signs of Rabies (foaming mouth, self-mutilation, growling, jerky behavior, red eyes). If the animal lives for ten days and does not develop rabies, then no infection has probably occurred. The head can later be analyzed to detect the disease.
If the animal is gone, prophylactic Rabies treatment is recommended in most places. Certain places, such as Hawaii, are known not to have native Rabies. Treatment is generally available in North America, Britain and the Northern European states. Away from these areas, try to get to the nearest embassy of one of these states and indicate an acute medical emergency. The embassy doctor is usually willing and able to help.
Many snakebites, even by venomous snakes, are not envenomed, and these can be treated as animal bites. Croatilid (rattlesnake and pit-viper) venoms cause the bitten area to turn green or purple. Elapsid (coral and monay other non-U.S. snakes) venoms cause swollen lymph nodes. If symptoms appear, they should be treated by compressing and cooling the bite(many say the bite should not be cooled, http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/995_snakes.html) and evacuating the victim, on a litter if possible. If a victim is unable to reach medical care within 30 minutes, a bandage, wrapped two to four inches above the bite, may help slow venom. The bandage should not cut off blood flow from a vein or artery. A good rule of thumb is to make the band loose enough that a finger can slip under it(American Red Cross, FDA/Office of Public Affairs:http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/995_snakes.html). If available, antivenim should be administered. See below for phone numbers to locate antivenims.
The black widow spider, and some scorpions are dangerous mostly to small children and elderly adults. Only the Sydney funnel-web spider of Australia is frequently dangerous to adults, and it resides only within 100 miles of Sydney Australia. Treat as snake-bite. Antivenins are available in the U.S. for black widow spiders and the dangerous scorpions native to the U.S.
To locate antivenims, the Anti-venim index in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States (1-405-271-5454) maintains a 24-hour hotline to help locate rare antivenims. Another possible number is the Poisondex central office in Denver, Colorado, USA (1-800-332-3073). In Australia, contact Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, Parkville, Victoria, Australia. In Asia try Haffkine Biopharmaceutical Corporation, Parel, Bombay, India. In Africa try the South African Institute for Medical Research, Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa. In most moderately developed countries, the national hospital can treat local venomous bites.

**Beo** · 11-14-2007, 04:15 PM

There are two basic causes of cramping. One is inadequate oxygenation of muscle, and the other is lack of water or salt. Cramps from poor oxygenation can be improved by rapid deep breathing, and stretching the muscle. Cramps from lack of salt and water can be treated by stretching the muscle, drinking water and eating salt. Pounding on the muscle can increase soreness.

What happens in a cramp is that lactic acid builds up because of normal anaerobic muscle metabolism. When the muscle burns sugar without enough oxygen, it makes lactic acid. The lactic acid finally becomes concentrated enough to trigger the contraction of the muscle. When the muscle lacks salt, the nerves firing the muscle are unable to recharge properly, causing a similar effect.

**Beo** · 11-14-2007, 04:17 PM

Wounds with spurting, bright red blood require immediate pressure to stop the bleeding. If necessary, you may need to use your finger to push on the bleeding artery.
Follow this with a pressure bandage so you can rest, but make sure the wound is not continuing to bleed into the bandage. Oozing, slower wounds can be treated the same way, but it's reasonable to clean them first.
Antibiotic ointment, if available, is helpful if medical care is many hours away. It should be spread freely on wounds. Some authorities even advocate gently packing it into deep, dirty, slowly-bleeding wounds.
Some authorities believe that it is better not to change dressings, if the dressing change does not include good quality cleaning and debridement. Otherwise, dressings should be changed at least daily.
If sterile normal saline is available, it is useful for rinsing most dirt out of wounds.
Regardless of the severity of the wound, proper cleaning and disinfection is essential on longer stays in the wilderness where an evacuation is not deemed necessary or is not possible. Relatively harmless local infections at the wound site can quickly escalate into life-threatening systemic infections if proper care is not taken. Some WFA courses provide instruction on the proper administering of antibiotic drugs to help treat serious infections.

**trax** · 11-14-2007, 04:28 PM

I have to wonder if you just wrote all that down off the top of your head, my suggestion is, people let's use what the man posted as a start point, not a finish. What are you going to use for dressings, disinfectants, splints etc...

**Beo** · 11-14-2007, 04:29 PM

Dandelions:
Occurring naturally in Asia, Dandelion is now a common plant everywhere. Known principally as a weed, dandelion has a range of health benefits. The leaves, which can be eaten in salads, are a powerful diuretic. The roots act as a "blood purifier" that helps both kidneys and the liver to remove impurities from the blood. This effect seems to be due to its potassium content. It also acts like a mild laxative and improves appetite and digestion.

MAIN PROPERTIES: Diuretic, digestive, antibiotic, bitter.

**Beo** · 11-14-2007, 04:33 PM

Hmmm... this will take some time, not off the top of my head just getting the obvious outta the way

Although I went to combat life saver school in the Army, got to carry an extra pack of goodies for that until I made Sergeant and then handed it to a private

**nell67** · 11-14-2007, 06:00 PM

Originally Posted by Beowulf65

There are two basic causes of cramping. One is inadequate oxygenation of muscle, and the other is lack of water or salt. Cramps from poor oxygenation can be improved by rapid deep breathing, and stretching the muscle. Cramps from lack of salt and water can be treated by stretching the muscle, drinking water and eating salt. Pounding on the muscle can increase soreness.

What happens in a cramp is that lactic acid builds up because of normal anaerobic muscle metabolism. When the muscle burns sugar without enough oxygen, it makes lactic acid. The lactic acid finally becomes concentrated enough to trigger the contraction of the muscle. When the muscle lacks salt, the nerves firing the muscle are unable to recharge properly, causing a similar effect.

OK that make 3 basic causes!!!

**Beo** · 11-14-2007, 06:54 PM

Pounding is not a cause of cramps (well depends on what your pounding

) that was a note as some people tend to actually hit the area where they have a cramp, I have seen this in the Army and it did nothing.

**nell67** · 11-14-2007, 06:57 PM

Originally Posted by Beowulf65

Pounding is not a cause of cramps (well depends on what your pounding

) that was a note as some people tend to actually hit the area where they have a cramp, I have seen this in the Army and it did nothing.

dude as any woman can tell ya,I wasnt talkin about pounding anything!

**trax** · 11-14-2007, 06:59 PM

Squeeze your eyes shut and pretend she didn't tell you my boy, it'll be ok, it's a woman thing we don't need to know... you go on back to whatever you're pounding