After a walk, a picnic in the meadow, or maybe a visit to a city park – unfortunately, but a tick can “attach” to a child in any situation. How to pull it out?
You come back from a forest expedition and suddenly you see that your child has brought a tick on his body. Such situations, unfortunately, often occur, and the worst thing we can do is to start panicking, or worse, scratch the place or spray it with perfume (some believe that the alcohol contained in them will remove the pest). If the tick hasn’t penetrated the skin yet, and only sits on it, then we can easily remove it, but what if it has already “settled” in the child’s body?
The method of removing the tick depends mainly on the extent to which it has penetrated the skin of our child. The intervention of a doctor is not always required. It is enough to know some basic rules of proper tick removal which will protect from possible infections and Lyme disease.
Remember that the child’s skin is much more sensitive than an adult’s, so you need to handle it gently. It is best to go to a pharmacy and buy a special device used to remove ticks. There are several types of such accessories. We can choose from: traditional tweezers, here it is better to opt for the plastic one, because the metal one may not pull out the tick in its entirety, and what’s worse by jerking cut the pest and its part will remain in the body, and then you will definitely need medical intervention.
A more effective method of removing the arachnid is to use a special tick pulling device
Pharmacists also recommend a tick-removal device called a lasso. These are special pens, sold in a set with a freezing spray. How to use them? You slide a special loop out of the device and place it on the tick, as close to the skin as possible. Then, still holding the tip close to the skin and releasing the button, direct the lasso perpendicularly to the site of the bite. After removal of the tick, the bite site is rinsed with disinfectant. In order to pull the tick out of the skin, it should be done in a smooth and decisive motion along the axis of the puncture. When pulling out the tick, it is absolutely necessary to avoid rotating movements, because this can cause the body of the tick to break off or even crush it.
As mentioned in the introduction, you can not lubricate the tick on the skin absolutely no disinfectants, because such chemicals cause the tick to spit out saliva, and this can be very harmful to humans. The saliva of ticks contains dangerous viruses and bacteria. Do not use the so called “grandma’s” methods – greasing the tick or slightly burning it is not an option! Pulling ticks out with the fingers, crushing or even squeezing them poses a great risk that the tick remains in the skin in the form of its head and body.
Read also What to do if your child is stung by a wasp?
Main photo: Erik Karits/ pexels.com
