What is a tourniquet used for?

Answer 1

A lightly applied tourniquet is used to engorge your veins prior to venipuncture. While a tourniquet can be used to stop catastrophic blood loss, it rarely is used for this and probably should be used less than it is. Here's why: If you have a bleeding forearm, a tourniquet proximal to the wound can be cranked down to stop ALL bloodflow. The good news is the bleeding has stopped. The bad news is all the blood distal to the tourniquet is quickly deoxygenating, and the blood and the tissue it was feeding is now in the process of dying. So are agents of the immune system in that area. And, as there's an open wound, the risk if infection is high, and increases every second. There quickly comes a point where the contents of the forearm below the tourniquet are quite septic. At this time, releasing the tourniquet floods a compromised body with a surprisingly heavy bacterial and viral load as well as a quantity of deoxygenated blood which will oxygenate very quickly indeed, which is clearly undesirable. The alternative is amputation. If there were no alternative, we could discuss this in sepulchral tones and figure we're saving a life at the cost of a limb. But we aren't. Nearly ANY wound on an extremity can be controlled by direct pressure. This includes guillotine amputations and a variety of other horrors. I imagine that somewhere out there, there's a wound so bad that I'd need to tourniquet it, but then I'd have to wonder if even a tourniquet would be enough? At that rarified point, there may be no good answer. In short, once the staple of battlefield medicine, the tourniquet is rarely used in a first aid context except for venipuncture nowadays.

Answer 2

1-Tourniquet bandage that stops the flow of blood from an artery by applying pressure.

2-An instrument for arresting hemorrhage. It consists essentially of a pad or compress upon which pressure is made by a band which is tightened by a screw or other means.

Answer 3

The tourniquet constricts the flow of venous blood in the arm and makes the veins more prominent so they are easier to find and penetrate with a needle. Texas School of Bussiness Student in Houston TX

Answer 4

To stop a very badly bleeding wound, or to draw blood in medical situations. It is also used to inject recreational or medicinal products directly into the vein as it is easier to locate when a tourniquet is used.

Answer 5

a tourniquet is something "typically" a tightly encircling bandage that`s used to check the bleeding temporarily stopping the blood flow through a large artery in a limb.

Answer 6

To restrict/stop blood flow from a bad injury.

Answer 7

in medical term it means a band to be drawn tightly around a finer/toe for the temporary arrest of circulation.

Answer 8

In emergency medicine, a tourniquet is traditionally used as a last resort to stop uncontrollable life-threatening hemorrhage from an extremity.

Answer 9

It is used to compress any blood vessel

Answer 10

Y