Children's safety cannot be ignored, including first aid methods!
The birth of children is the best gift to our parents, watching them learn to walk, watching them learn to speak, watching them slowly explore the world, children's little by little progress is seen by parents.
The biggest wish of parents is that their children can live this life happily and peacefully, as the old saying goes, "Raise a child for a hundred years old, often worry about ninety-nine", this sentence is a good interpretation of our parents' hearts.
However, in the process of children's growth, there may be some accidents, and every time such accidents occur, parents are particularly distressed, so today I will tell you how to avoid these accidents.
Home Article
▌ Be careful when swallowing foreign objects by mistake
Children are curious about the world at a young age, and the most common thing they do is to put objects in their mouths and bite, so it is also common for children to eat foreign bodies by mistake.
Toys, food, coins, buttons, batteries, etc. in the home are all risk factors. Food or small toys are at risk of getting stuck in the respiratory tract, causing pneumonia, and more severely may lead to suffocation. Corrosive items like batteries, if swallowed, may cause irreversible damage to the entire digestive system. The news of children swallowing foreign objects by mistake can be said to be common, so if children accidentally swallow foreign objects by mistake, what should we do?
Figure 1 News screenshot
Once a child has swallowed a foreign object by mistake, the first thing we have to do is to roughly determine where the child's foreign body jam is. First, simply divide the places that are prone to foreign bodies into two major areas of the digestive system and respiratory tract trachea, and the symptoms are completely different when foreign bodies appear in these two areas:
Digestive system: Older children tell parents that they feel painful swallowing and/or a foreign body when they eat. Young children who cannot express themselves well in words will refuse to eat, and regardless of age, they may have symptoms such as drooling and vomiting.
Airway trachea: If there is acute respiratory distress, cough, stridor, and forced breathing, there is a high suspicion that a foreign body has entered the trachea, and in severe cases, there will be symptoms of inability to breathe.
Fig. 2 Various foreign bodies seen on plain abdominal flakes and foreign bodies removed under endoscopy, source network
If a foreign body jams the respiratory tract, there is a fatal danger, which is a method that our parents must learn to give first aid.
- Children under 3 years old can use the Heimlich first aid method of patting the back and pressing the chest:
First remove the foreign body in the mouth, then support the baby's head with the palm of your hand, tilt 20 degrees above the head and feet, tap the back 5 times, then return to the front, press the upper abdomen 5 times with your middle finger, and repeat until the foreign body is discharged.
Figure 3 Back-pat chest pressure Hamlik first aid method source https://www.cgh.org.tw/ec99/rwd1320/allphoto/5000/413.pdf
- Older children can use the regular Heimlich First Aid Method:
Hold the child's waist and abdomen with both hands, hold a fist in one hand at the two horizontal fingers on the umbilicus, and fix the fist with the other hand, and continuously, forcefully, and rapidly impact the upper abdomen until the child spits out a foreign body.
Figure 4 Heimlich First Aid, source network
If you swallow a foreign body into the digestive system, you need to know as much as possible what foreign body the child swallowed, and seek medical treatment in time, rather than inducing vomiting on the child at home, which is likely to cause the child to inhale the foreign body into the respiratory tract and cause aspiration pneumonia, and do not try to use rice balls, vinegar and other foods to forcibly swallow the foreign body into a deeper part, before determining the location of the foreign body (this is why you must go to the hospital to check the reason, positioning!). Do not feed your child to drink sesame oil, eat coarse grains and other defecation behaviors.
Of course, the most important thing for accidental swallowing is daily prevention, to the child's toys must pay attention to whether there are small parts, home medicines, batteries and silver coins should be placed in the child's touch. For younger toddlers, it is important to have someone to look after them when awake. Special attention should also be paid to the fact that when children eat, children are required to sit at the table, do not run and jump, frolic and other behaviors during meals, and avoid choking caused by food.
▌ Drowning is not uncommon in the home
Many parents must have such a question, how can drowning appear in the home chapter? Our children also don't go to the lake to swim, and drowning should not happen. However, the research data tells us that this is not the case!
According to the data analysis of the "Review Report on the Status quo of Injuries in Adolescents and Children in China", the most common places where drowning occurs are:
1. Public residential places (26.78%)
2. At home (17.06%)
3. Farm/Farmland (13.61%)
Figure 5 Source: Review Report on the Current Situation of Injuries in Adolescents and Children in China 2010-2015
It is not difficult to see that drowning is not avoided far away from rivers and lakes, and the proportion of children drowning in the home is even higher than that in farmland. Baths, fish tanks, water basins, buckets, and even toilets in the home can drown young children.
Figure 6 Screenshot of source news
The above reports are almost every year, and in the emergency room, I met a mother who, while bathing her child, turned around and answered a phone call, and came back to find her child drowning in the bathtub. Therefore, in our daily life, we must do the following points to prevent it:
1. Remove decorations with water in your home, such as fish tanks, small flowing water decorations, etc. These things should not be placed in the early childhood of the child, and if you like it very much, you can put them in a place that the child cannot touch.
2. If there is a swimming pool or a small pond in the home, to do a good job of isolation measures, you can choose a guardrail to enclose it to prevent the child from falling in.
3. Empty the water container in time after use, such as a bucket for cleaning, a water basin for pets to drink water, etc.
4. In the absence of adult accompaniment, children are not allowed to enter the bathroom alone, when bathing young children, do not leave suddenly, if you must leave, please take the children away from the bathroom, especially children under 1 year old, they are likely to slide into the bathtub, causing suffocation.
Once the child is found to be drowning, first observe whether the child is breathing, do not use the finger to probe the method of sniffing the sniffle, need to be attached to see if the child's chest is undulating, if the child is unconscious and no breathing, you need to call the emergency immediately and perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the child. If the child is breathing, but the breathing is weak, we must clean up the foreign body of the mouth and nose in time, stabilize the lateral lying position, and call the emergency telephone at the same time.
Dry drowning and delayed drowning also need to be vigilant, the so-called dry drowning refers to 24 hours to 48 hours after drowning, due to strong frightening stimulation, causing reflex laryngeal obstruction, resulting in suffocation. Delayed drowning is when drowning, although only a small amount of water enters the lungs, and these waters cause the lungs to become inflamed or swollen in the following hours, making the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the body difficult and suffocation.
Therefore, the child's breathing difficulties, cough, chest pain or vomiting after drowning must not be ignored, and it is necessary to seek medical treatment in time.
Figure 7 Source network
▌ Fall, fall should be strictly prevented
Parents generally feel that it is safer at home, and it is easy to let down their vigilance, but some children are active by nature, like to climb up and down, if the doors and windows of the home are not closed strictly, it is easy to fall from the doors and windows.
Figure 8 Screenshot of source news
In order to avoid such a tragedy, we must tell our children not to approach the window when it is open, to pay attention to safety when going up and down the stairs, and not to chase on the stairs.
In addition to communicating with the child, we can also take precautions in advance, such as placing safety fences on low-height windows, beds, stairwells, and for higher windows, we can put safety locks. Children need to be cared for while playing, and as long as the child is out of your line of sight, it is not effectively cared for.
If the child is unfortunate enough to fall from a building or fall from a high place, we must check whether the child's vital signs are stable, have unconscious disorders, and immediately call for help, do not shake or move the child, to avoid causing secondary injury.
Out of office
▌ There are thousands of roads, and safety is the first
We can take our children out on a car outing, or we can take our children to stroll on the streets full of plane trees, but the premise of doing these things is to be safe, happy to go out, and safe to get home, so we must tell our children to teach children to travel safely and lead by example.
- No matter how beautiful the flowers outside, you should pay attention to your feet:
Children are at risk for misjudgment because their sensory and cognitive development has not yet reached a mature level. Therefore, as a guardian, you need to constantly lead and remind children, such as telling children to pay attention to vehicles when walking on the road; taking zebra crossings when crossing the road; paying attention to traffic lights; observing whether there is a vehicle after seeing the green light, and confirming that it is safe to pass; not rushing to run when encountering lights; not playing on the road or in a place with a lot of traffic; and paying attention when walking, and not being distracted by leaves and flowers or kittens and puppies.
As long as the news of children's car accidents is searched, almost every day, parents must teach their children to travel correctly!
Figure 9 Screenshot of source news
- Car seats never forget
Intersecting with road safety, car safety is relatively simple, we just need to let children get used to using car seats and seat belts can effectively reduce the harm to children after accidents. Placing children in a car child safety device reduces the risk of serious injury by 80% compared to wearing only a seat belt. In addition, the risk of accident injury with child safety seats is reduced by 77% compared to the absence of safety devices [3].
Last year's newly revised Law on the Protection of Minors clearly stipulates that parents or other guardians of minors should adopt child safety seats, but in daily life, some families give up the use of car seats because children are not used to car seats and cry. Parents must always keep in mind the importance of child safety seats and seat belts for children, and do not take chances.
Figure 10 Screenshot of source news
In addition, the correct use of the car seat is also very important, be sure to install the car seat according to the tutorial on the product manual, the use of the car seat needs to be placed in the back of the car, the direction of the baby seat is consistent with the direction of the seat, and must confirm whether it is fixed, to ensure that the car seat will not shake during the driving process, but also to confirm that the child fastens the seat belt and retains a finger-wide gap.
Brief summary:
Today is June 1 Children's Day, children are active by nature, full of curiosity about everything around them, we can not stifle the nature of children, so we need parents to guide correctly, let children play happily under the premise of safety, and become a healthy, positive, and loving child for the world.
Bibliography:
Global Child Safety Organization & China National Center for Disease Control and Prevention.Review Report on the Status quo of Adolescent and Child Injuries in China from 2010 to 2015.2017.
[2] Merck Manuals Professional Edition.Drowning–Injuries,Poisoning-Merck.2018.
[3] CDC.Child Passenger Safety.2020.
This article was first published: Pediatrics Channel of the Medical Professions
This article is written by Cao Gongzi