Spinal injury
One has to be really careful with the person, who is the suffering from severe pains on his or her back or neck because it might be a spinal injury which is highly dangerous. The risk is very high as it might end up in permanent paralysis or any other longtime health hazards. The following conditions show that the person has a severe spinal injury if:
- The person becomes unconscious very frequently after a recent head injury. This might result in a spinal injury too. Just make sure that injury is safe.
- There is extreme hurting on the neck and back of the person. The pain grows slowly and finally becomes unbearable.
- The neck of the person becomes immobile. This is because of the extreme pain that the person undergoes when he or she tries to move their neck.
- Sometimes a significant pressure on back or head may be experienced by the person.
- The person may feel energy less or might even have problems in moving their body parts such as hands or legs, bladder and even the stomach.
- The shape of the neck or back might become abnormal.
Though spinal injuries are very common, many times they can be controlled and thus made to cause very less amount of damage. The following precautions have to be taken when you encounter a person whom you suspect to suffering with spinal injury:
- The first thing that has to be done is ask for medical help. This can be done by calling 911 or any other local medical emergency number.
- Utmost care has to be taken in handling. Any kind of body movements especially those of the neck and the back should be avoided. To make sure that there is no movement, place just support the neck by two very heavy clothes, one on each side. You can also manually hold the neck and head so that no movement is possible. The main thing here is that the person’s position should not be changed.
- Try to give the person a lot of medication, with one precaution that there has to be no movement in the neck and the head of the person. Just in case all the signs of circulation like the breathing or the coughing or the pulse or any kind of movement is absent then start with CPR. Just take care that to open the airway the head should not be tilted. Fingers have to be used to hold the jaw and then it has to be lifted.
- In case the person has started puking badly, and the situation of the rolling of head and movement of head becomes really unavoidable, then roll the entire body of the person so that the movement of head is very little. Two or more people can do this rolling. These two people can work together in tandem to make sure that the person is onto one side and head is still.