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Nosebleed

By Bjarne Lühr Hansen PhD, MD and Philipp Skafte-Holm MD, Mentor Institute

Far most people experience nosebleed one or several times. Most cases of nosebleed arise because you pick your nose or because you receive a blow to the nose. If you have received a heavy blow to the nose and the nose looks crooked, it can be broken.

Younger persons usually bleed from some blood vessels of the nasal septum just inside the nostrils. The blood vessels reside just beneath the mucous membrane and bleed easily – even from light nose picking. A bloody nose can appear pretty brutal, especially if you wake up in the middle of the night with your face covered in blood. It is, however, only very small amounts of blood that is lost during nosebleed.

A bloody nose is easy to treat but if you have had it once, it does not take a lot of nose picking for the wound to bleed again. If you have repeated nosebleeds, it may be necessary with cauterization. When cauterizing, the doctor rubs a corrosive remedy on the origin of the bleeding. It is not possible to cauterize while you have a nosebleed – first, the bleeding must be stopped.

What can you do?

A bloody nose can usually be stopped by putting a cotton swab into the nostril harbouring the bleeding and squeezing the front of the nose with two fingers. You must squeeze the nose hard for 5 to 10 minutes – check your watch. If this is not sufficient, a small tight roll of gaze, 1 cm wide, is firmly fixed in the bleeding nostril. You should lie down with the head elevated and not drink hot beverages.

Contact the doctor tomorrow

If the bloody nose is caused by a blow and the nose looks crooked the next day. It is impossible to see if the nose is crooked, if it is swollen. Therefore you should wait one to two days before you determine whether the nose is crooked or not. In any case, a broken nose is not treatable before the swelling has disappeared.

Contact the doctor immediately

If you cannot stop the bleeding.