A nurse's guide for the operating room / by Nicholas Senn. Pub. under the direction of the sisters of charity, St. Joseph's hospital...Chicago.

  • Senn, Nicholas, 1844-1908.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A nurse's guide for the operating room / by Nicholas Senn. Pub. under the direction of the sisters of charity, St. Joseph's hospital...Chicago. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    rubber band, to which is attached on one side a chain and on the other a hook. In the absence of the constrictor, a piece of stont rubber tubing, an ordinary rubber bandage or an elastic suspender may be advantageously employed. The limb should be held in a vertical position for a few minutes to render it practically bloodless, when the constriction is made at its base with sufficient firmness to arrest at once both the arterial and venous circula- tion. The successive turns should not override each other, but be placed side by side in order to guard against harmful pressure on the underlying large nerve trunks, which has occasionally been the direct cause of temporary and even permanent paralysis. Elastic constriction is also employed in emergency cases and in autotransfusion. It must be remembered that it is dangerous to pro- long elastic constriction for more than two hours, as * when it is continued beyond that time it might result in gangrene of the limb. LIGATION OF BLOOD VESSELS. The most direct and surest way to arrest hemorrhage is ligation of the severed vessel, artery or vein. This is now usually done by the use of the animal absorbable ligature—catgut or kangaroo tendon—although some surgeons give the fine aseptic silk ligature the prefer- ence. Sterilized catgut and kangaroo tendon ligatures, according to their thickness, remain in the tissues from 7 to .21 days, long enough to interrupt the circulation until the interior of the vessel at the point of ligation is obliterated, when they are removed by absorption by the new tissue cells formed around them. Hemostatic forceps, artery needle, sharp tenaculum and a curved round needle threaded with catgut are the instruments to be kept in readiness for the ligation of blood vessels.