Nosebleed
By Bjarne Lühr Hansen PhD, MD and Philipp Skafte-Holm MD, Mentor Institute
Far most children experience nosebleed one or several times. Most cases of nosebleed arise because the child picks its nose or because the child has suffered a blow to the nose. If the child has suffered a heavy blow to the nose and the nose looks crooked, it might be broken.
Children and youngsters usually bleed from 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 the child wakes up in the middle of the night with its 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 the child has had it once, it does not take a lot of nose picking for the wound to bleed again. If the child has 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 the child has a nosebleed – first, the bleeding must be stopped.