Usually when we sleep, we feel the pain in our neck. How can we protect our neck from being hurt? What should we do if we have neck injury?
The neck is the channel connecting the head and trunk of human body. It contains many important organs such as the common carotid artery, internal carotid artery, internal jugular vein and external jugular vein accompanying with the artery, as well as the cervical nerve, accessory nerve, vagus nerve, recurrent laryngeal nerve, service nerve and cervical sympathetic Ganglion Chain passing here. In addition, there are also tracheal and esophageal tissues passing through here.
In case of neck trauma, it may cause bleeding, dyspnea and circulatory disturbance. Neck injury can be divided into closed injury and open injury. Closed injury is often seen in boxing and strangulation, which can cause hematoma, subcutaneous emphysema, often lead to the disappearance of consciousness, slow pulse, blood pressure drop, and glottic spasm.
It is generally believed that this phenomenon is due to the stimulation of the carotid sinus (sympathetic and vagus nerves), which causes the cerebral reflex circulatory disorder. Open injury, such as knife cut and scissors stab, is more common in war time, such as gunshot wound and shrapnel wound. The main risk of this injury is large blood vessel injury causing massive hemorrhage, most of which occur hemorrhagic shock and death or suffocation due to blood entering the trachea. Venous injury, air into the blood circulation, resulting in air embolism of the lung and brain, subcutaneous emphysema of the neck can invade the mediastinum, resulting in mediastinal emphysema, secondary infection, can cause serious suppurative mediastinitis.
If stab nerve, can cause shoulder, arm muscle paralysis. If the cervical sympathetic nerve chain is injured, the same side of eyeball may sink down, the pupil may shrink, the upper eye may droop, and the same side of the face may not have hyperhidrosis.
Most cases of neck injury are serious and complex. For the patients with large blood vessels bleeding in the neck, only sterile gauze can be used to stop bleeding, and then the healthy side of the upper limb is raised as a scaffold, and one side compression bandaging method is used. For neck injury, it is not suitable to make a circular compression bandage in the neck, so as to avoid breathing difficulties caused by compression of the trachea, or brain edema caused by the influence of pressure on the vein.
Warm tips: keep the respiratory tract unobstructed in case of neck injury. If there is blood clot blocking the respiratory tract, try to eliminate it. For open injuries such as neck cut and stab injury, send them to the hospital for treatment.