Hair tourniquet phenomenon can cause children to lose fingers and legs

Hair tourniquet is a hair or thread wrapped around an infant's fingers and toes and obstructs blood circulation.

Although hair tourniquet is not frequent, you should not take it lightly as this can cause long-term damage to children. The following article, aFamilyToday Health will give you information about hair tourniquet and how to prevent it.

1. What is Hair tourniquet?

Hair tourniquet occurs in babies and young children when excess hair or thread inside the glove and socks is left over, which then wrap around their fingers or toes and tend to tighten when the baby moves. moving.

Problems like that can happen in your baby's sleep. The culprit behind is the excess fabric on the edge of the blanket.

2. Signs your child has hair tourniquet

Hair tourniquet is often uncomfortable or even painful. Therefore, the baby can cry a lot. If you find that your baby has unusual symptoms, you should examine the baby's fingers and feet to eliminate the case of just wrapping around the child's arms and legs.

Some signs of hair tourniquet:

Cry a lot

Fingers, feet, genitals and tongue are abnormally red or discolored

Slightly swollen fingers and toes.

If not detected early, this situation is very dangerous. Hair tourniquet keeps blood from circulating to the entangled area. Hence, the infant is at risk of injury or necrosis of an affected body part. 

Parents should detect this condition early in order to:

Helps blood flow to the part of the body that is wrapped

Prevent the hair from getting into the skin

Prevent skin from growing into areas that are tangled by hair or thread.

3. Remedies for when children have hair tourniquet

The only solution is to completely remove the hair or just wrap around the baby's body. This will be more difficult if the body is swollen or the thread or hair is too thin to see clearly.

The easiest way is to use a hair removal cream with active ingredients such as calcium hydroxide, sodium hydroxide or calcium thioglycolate. However, you should only try this method if the skin around the affected area is not bleeding or cracked. The steps are as follows:

Move the baby to a well-lit area for a better view

Determine the position of the hair or thread

Apply the cream directly to the hair area

Wait 5 minutes

Rinse well with warm water

Use an antiseptic on the affected skin area.

Tweezers can be used if you want, but it will be a bit difficult to do because the fingers and toes are quite narrow.

If you still don't see any signs of improvement in your baby's skin, take him to the doctor right away for prompt treatment.

4. Prevent hair tourniquet from happening to your baby

To prevent hair tourniquet, you should:

Tie your hair neatly

Brush your hair often, picking up any strands of hair that fall into the trash

Carefully check your child's gloves and leg covers to see if they are just redundant or you can turn left before putting them on their arms and legs.

Regularly check the fingers and toes of young children to be able to detect when any abnormality occurs early.