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> Hell, its not recommended to keep a tourniquet applied for more than two hours Minor note: this is somewhat outdated. They've determined now it's more like
by dmoy 3y ago
> Hell, its not recommended to keep a tourniquet applied for more than two hours
Minor note: this is somewhat outdated. They've determined now it's more like 4-6 hours before it causes any damage at all.
Per Stop the bleed, Mayo Clinic, etc.
But yea faster than 6-10 hours that's for sure. I bet if you went into that ER with an average time of 9 hrs and a tq stamped hour ago on your arm, they'd get you in pretty fast though. Triage is still a thing
- _heimdall 3y agoI actually had 6 hours for the tourniquet limit at first and did a quick sanity check online to find the 2 hour stat. Thanks for the clarification here, I could have sworn I had seen slightly longer times more recently but haven't gone through training in a while now.
- FireBeyond 3y agoYup, paramedic here. Several hours is entirely fine. We'll document the time of application. But (and admittedly different circumstances) ortho surgeons will regularly tourniquet limbs for several hours while doing their work.
- osmano807 3y agoThere's some practical limits as neurons start to have irreversible injury after 6 hours of ischemia and 8 hours on muscles. Usually we don't put tourniquets for more than 2h30min in lower limbs because after circa 2h we start to have some reperfusion injuries, lesser time on other segments. The usual protocol is to not use tourniquets unless necessary, for ER care have the tourniquets removed each 30min for a few minutes to reduce reperfusion injuries. For surgery we generally follow this with the intervals no bigger than 2h. (source: Ortho and Trauma surgeon)