Your walking along in the woods with a friend, and he trips and falls and you hear a loud snap from his arm. Its clear what happened, he must have broken his arm, its deformed and he says it hurts a lot. Now the question is, what do you do? You are several miles in the woods, no where near a public road, and help would be hours away. Does this sound like a scary situation for any of you? I hope this post is able to ease some of that fear you may have.
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When you are in a situation such as this, if you are in the wilderness, you have all kinds of resources at your disposal to help in this situation. First and foremost, you need to check for a pulse below the injury. This is a very important step, because if there is no pulse below the injury, the chances of loosing the limb very high. A lack of blood flow will lead to tissue and cell death. If there is a pulse you are in good shape. However, if there is no pulse, we will cover later in another post. Lets assume that there is a good strong pulse below the injury. Now you need to find a way to splint arm. You can use anything to splint with, from news papers, to sticks, to tent poles. The most important part of splinting, is you want to tie above and below the injury. You never want to tie a splint on top of an injury. Doing that can cause further damage to the limb. You also want to ensure that when you tie it, you don't cut off blood flow to the rest of the limb. Pic 1 is a basic picture of a lower arm with a board for a splint. As you can see the fingers are curled, and it is tied above and below the injury. In the second picture is an arm in a splint, sling and swath.. The reason behind the swing and swath, is to eliminate any play and bounce that the arm may experience which will cause additional pain. To make a sling, you need to take something that you can use to raise and hold the injury up, and in place. Usually a triangle bandage or cravat is used, but not everyone will have access to that item. As long as it supports the weight of the limb anything really can be used. A swath is just securing the arm tightly against the chest. This covers the basic first aid for a closed arm fracture, known as a simple fracture. It is important to seek medical assistance as soon as possible to ensure its properly set to allow proper healing.
Now lets talk about some materials you can use to make this splint. If you are in the woods, saplings, limbs, and branches make a great splint. But you still need a way to tie it. You can use anything from duck tape, electrical tape, to clothing. If you use tape, you need to make sure to make a padding of some sort to ensure that it does not stick to the skin, as pulling of hair is very painful. I recommend that you use ace bandages or cravats type bandages to tie it. The main goal is to limit the movement of the broken bone. You can give the person some ibuprofen to help with swelling and pain, but they may not help immediately.
I hope you found this helpful, if you have any questions feel free to comment and I will try to answer them as quickly as I can. This blog is for reference only and not intended to make you a trained medical professional. Until later, stay safe out there...
Country Boy
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