The recommendation is popular that a person with the first signs of a stroke needs to pierce or cut the fingertips. This allegedly reduces the pressure, and the blood clot, along with the stirring blood, will move. We decided to check whether the effectiveness of such a practice is confirmed by scientific data.

This Non -standard First aid method is proposed to use if a stroke is suspected Bloggers V "Zen"And on YouTube, users social networks And forums. Often the Council is based on personal experience - supposedly this is exactly what the author saved or helped him Save another person. The recommendation to cut or pierce the fingertips with a stroke. site Lipetsk dental clinic No. 1, on Belarusian portals about health And in the Ukrainian Media. The real case of applying this method Described Inessa Kolpakov, an ambulance blogger and paramedic: “We are coming to the address, and there are as if all parts "The saws “were shot at once. <...> It occurred to someone to cut her (the patient with suspicion of a stroke.-Approx. Ed.) Fingers on her arms and legs, release blood, reduce pressure so that she came out of her head from her head.”

Stroke is acute violation cerebral circulation (ONMK), which leads to damage to brain cells. Among the symptoms of this state are sudden weakness in the limbs, speech impairment and coordination, as well as the asymmetry of the face. The collective term “stroke” is called several different pathologies at once: the brain infarction (ischemic stroke), intracosemic hemorrhage (hemorrhagic stroke) and subarachnoid hemorrhage (hemorrhage in the cavity between the spider webs and soft).

Ischemic stroke arises Due to the violation of blood supply to the brain, most often due to blockage of blood vessels with a thrombus or atherosclerotic plaques. Blocking the lumen of the vessel leads to an acute oxygen deficiency, as a result of which the brain cells begin to die - tissue necrosis occurs. The longer the circulatory violation remains, the more the affected area becomes. Because of this, the execution of the functions for which the damaged area of the brain was responsible is worsening.

Hemorrhagic stroke is characterized by a rupture of blood vessels and hemorrhage into the brain. Spilled blood penetrates the neighboring areas of this organ and forms hematoma, which exerts pressure on the brain structures, causing their displacement. This leads to a violation of the functioning of the affected area of the brain. Hemorrhagic stroke occurs due to increased blood pressure, vascular aneurysm or blood pathologies, leading to a violation of coagulation.

In the case of subarachnoid hemorrhage, the blood enters the space between the membranes of the brain and the edema develops there, which compresses other vessels and also violates the normal functioning of the organ.

More than 80% strokes - ischemic, about 10-15% - hemorrhagic, and on subarachnoid hemorrhages It is necessary About 5% of all cases, that is, in 15–20% of the ONMK, there was no thrombus that could be “pushed” with the help of provoked bleeding.

In turn, ischemic strokes depending on the pathogenetics divided The following types:

Atherotrombotic - the lumen of the vessel is completely or partially overlap either atherosclerotic plaques, consisting of cholesterol and other joint compounds, calcium and fibers of connective tissue, or developing against the background of blood cloth atherosclerosis. When the blood vessel is overlapped, the blood current stops downstream, after which the nerve cells quickly die. The higher the thrombosis developed, the greater the damaged area of the brain and coarser symptoms;
cardiemball - violation of blood supply is caused by wandering through the bloodstream Embols, most often blood clots formed in the cavity of the heart, but reached the brain;
Other types-for example, occurred due to inflammation of the vascular membrane due to acute or chronic meningitis, vasculitis and syphilis, stratification of the walls of cerebral arteries or aorta, increasing blood viscosity, degeneration of the wall of small arteries and its substitution with lipids and collagen, etc.

The narrowing scheme of the lumen of the artery due to atherosclerosis. In yellow, atherosclerotic plaques are shown. Source

At the same time, in most cases, a stroke in almost all age groups doctors Do not find Neither narrowing the lumen of the vessel, nor a blood clot, nor caused a pathology of diseases. Such a stroke calls cryptogenic. Among patients over 50 years old, who managed to establish the cause of the violation, cardioembolism is the second most common, and atherosclerosis is the fourth.

Distribution of the causes of a stroke depending on age. Source

It turns out that from ischemic strokes, which account for about 80% of the ONMK, about half also flow without blockage of blood vessels and, therefore, cuts of fingertips, even in theory, will not facilitate the state of the sick. In addition, if in external symptoms, distinguish ischemic stroke from hemorrhagic or hemorrhage in subarachnoid space as a whole Maybe, then to determine by eye, the ischemic stroke is caused by a thrombus or not, it will not work.

To figure out whether the punctures or cuts of the fingertips with ischemic strokes caused by thromboembolism will still help, you need to understand how the circulatory system is arranged. Blood vessels divided On three types: arteries (blood moves from the heart to different parts of the body), veins (blood returns to the heart) and capillaries (connect arteries and veins).

If you look at the scheme of the artery of the brush, it will become clear that there are no arteries in the fingertips themselves, they are penetrated by a net of small capillaries. Diameter The closest to the pillows of the fingers of their own palmar arteries in the area of the distal interfalance joint closest to the pads is extremely small - only 0.7–0.8 mm.

In this case, the diameter of the brain arteries much More - from 2 mm, that is, a foreign body that clogged the vessel of this diameter, will not be able to leave it through the incision on the pillow of the finger. Even if the thrombus moved (and ischemic stroke is due to the fact that it literally stuck in the lumen of the vessel), there is no guarantee that it will move towards the finger and will not get stuck along the way somewhere else, for example, in the other area of the brain. Moreover, with massive bleeding, that is, losses of about 20% of the total volume of circulating blood (it is impossible to achieve this with a cut of the pillows of the fingers, but this can happen in case of damage to large vessels), is happening Vasoconstriction is a narrowing of the lumen of blood vessels in the body, slowing down or even completely stopping the blood flow in the vessels. Therefore, from the slender artery, the slowed flow of blood will also not be able to “wash” any blood clot. Note that such a volume of blood loss is dangerous in itself, since Great The risk of developing hypovolemic shock is a potentially fatal state fraught with irreversible changes in all organs. Therefore, from the idea to cut a patient with a stroke, not a fingertips, but larger vessels should also be refused.

If a stroke is suspected, experts recommend that you first carry out a simple test, the sequence of actions in which can be remembered by the abbreviation U.D.A.r.:

U (smile) - ask a person to smile. With a stroke, the smile is often asymmetric, curve, one corner of the mouth is lowered;
D (movement) - ask a person to simultaneously raise both arms or legs (if he lies). Typically, the hand or leg with the side opposite from the focus does not rise or moves much slower and not synchronously from the other;
A (articulation)-ask a person to pronounce any phrase. Stroke is often accompanied by speech disorders;
P (decision) - if the victim cannot complete one or more tasks, call an ambulance by reporting the test results.

While doctors are traveling need to To help the patient take a horizontal position - it is best on his side, lifting his head slightly. The victim cannot be eaten, drink and use any medicine: firstly, with a stroke, the process of swallowing can be disturbed and a person can choke, and secondly, ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes require completely different therapy. It is impossible to make the right diagnosis exactly at home, so any medicine can harm the patient. If the patient is difficult to breathe, you can open the windows in the room and unfasten tight clothes, if, on the contrary, it is cold - it is permissible to cover the victim. In the case of loss of consciousness and respiratory disorders, cardiopulmonary resuscitation can be carried out. It is important to remember that nerve cells without sufficient blood supply die after 5 minutes. And they can’t save them with any improvised means, this zone will suffer in any case. However, a border region (penumble) is formed around the dead cells, the nerve cells in which are at risk of death, but they can only be saved by complex therapy in a profile medical institution. The longer the treatment is postponed, the more the penumble becomes, which means that the forecast for life and the subsequent restoration of the patient worsens. Therefore, the main task of a person who helps the victim of a stroke is to provide the most quick call to the ambulance and to inform doctors in advance about the observed symptoms.

The useless and even dangerous advice to cut the fingertips with a stroke has been spreading on the network for many years. Unlike most other sources, in social networks it often Dispersing In the form of the same text as a recommendation from a certain Chinese doctor. An unnamed medic, who, incidentally, offers in the framework of first aid for a stroke to prank up earlobes, is shared, including his own experience in saving the victim in 1979. At the same time, the hero changes several times in the viral text of the hero: at first it is male (“In 1979, I taught a college in Taichong in Fun HAAP”), then the female (“Once another teacher ran to my class and said excitedly:“ Ms. Liu Liu, our leader seems to be a stroke! ””), Then I immediately went to the third floor ”) and again) ("When I saw our leader Mr. Chen Fu Tyan, he was pale.") Moreover, the city of Thachung is not in China, but in Taiwan, but the college of Fung HAAP there No. In turn, the grammatical heterogeneity of the narrative may be due to the fact that the text was originally written in a foreign language and distorted when translated into Russian.

Indeed, the groundlessness of the Council about the puncture of the fingertips with a stroke back in 2006 Disassembled The New York Times. There, the source of the recommendation is a viral newsletter by e -mail. Even earlier, in 2004, the American Facticsching Project Snopes also He wrote About this council, indicating that it appeared no later than 2003 and just in the form of a mailing list. Its full text in 2007 Placed In his blog, Dr. Stephen Novella. From the letter, the reason for the “sex change” becomes clear - the text is written on behalf of a certain Irene Liu, whose father allegedly died of a stroke and now she shares useful information with others. It was she, according to the text, that she learned about the unusual method from the Chinese doctor. In addition to the useless practice of piercing the fingers there is a much more frightening advice: not to take the victim to the hospital, because shaking in the car will supposedly lead to the fact that all capillaries in his brain will burst. As already indicated above, a stroke is by no means a bursting capillary, but a violation of blood supply to the arteries (less often in Vienna), and 80% of the ONMK are not a hemorrhage, but a blockage of a vessel.

Thus, the list of actions to help a patient with a stroke is very limited: you only need to immediately call an ambulance and provide the patient with a safe and comfortable pose. No medicines and manipulations, except perhaps the heart-and-and-hearth resuscitation (if the helping, of course, knows how to carry out it), are not required and can only harm. The cuts of the fingertips of the fingers will definitely not help the thrombus to move, and the cuts of larger vessels are able to lead to life -threatening blood and shock.

Image on the cover: Dall-E