What to do if a tick bites a child - first aid tips for parents

Hello! We are always especially kind to children. We try to “blow off dust particles from them” and protect from various misfortunes.

But still, problems sometimes occur. And so it happened with my niece when she was with me on vacation.

The usual walk in the forest ended with a tick bite. It was very annoying, because all safety precautions were followed. But there is nothing to be done - I had to deal with the problem. Want to know what to do if a tick bites a baby? Now I will talk about priority actions.

Child bitten by a tick - what to do?

When camping, parents often find in a child on the body of an invading bloodsucker - a tick. The bite of this insect can threaten a child with infection with quite dangerous infections - tick-borne encephalitis and borreliosis (Lyme disease).

Children love to play in the grass, where they can get a bite of the "villain." Ticks can be brought into living quarters by pets or on clothes, with collected berries, mushrooms, and flower bouquets.

Remedies

To prevent tick bites, it is recommended that a child wear such clothes and shoes that would cover all parts of the body as much as possible for a walk or outdoor recreation. On a hot summer day, putting on a “spacesuit” is also not easy for a child - it threatens to interfere with heat transfer and heat stroke.

Children over 2 years old can be vaccinated against tick-borne encephalitis. Before vaccination, the child must be healthy for a month and undergo examination. In addition, you can apply special protective drugs: repellents that repel ticks from children.

Repellents for children include: “Off-child”, “Efkalat”, “Phthalar” creams, “Medilisik for children from mosquitoes” aerosol, “Biban-gel”, Evital, Pihtal colognes, and “Kamarant” product. The funds are applied to exposed areas of the body and to clothing that is left on the street before drying before drying.

The protective effect of repellents on clothing lasts up to 5 days. With high humidity or in rain, the effectiveness of the product is reduced.

Traditional medicine recommends the use of pungent essential oils as a deterrent against ticks. They can be used for small children in the absence of allergies. For this purpose, clove oil, peppermint, rosemary, eucalyptus are suitable.

Every 20 minutes during rest and after the child returns from a walk, it is necessary to carefully examine the scalp and skin. The bite itself is not felt, which is associated with the release of anesthetic into the wound. Ticks are most often found on delicate areas of the child’s body (in the groin, on the neck, behind the ears, in the back of the head).

The bite site may be indicated by a slight swelling, redness of the skin area with a black dot inside. It can be somewhat painful, accompanied by itching. When a tick is found, one should not panic; it is necessary to remove the insect as soon as possible in order to prevent possible infection of the child.

Parent Tactics

You can call 03 to specify the address of the emergency room or sanitary and epidemiological station where the tick will be removed.

You can delete it yourself. To do this, you should first prepare some antiseptic (iodine, alcohol, etc.), any container with a lid, cotton balls, some tweezers, strong threads.

Prior to extraction, the bite site must be treated with an antiseptic solution. In the pharmacy you can pre-purchase a special device (anti-tick, trix, teak nipper) to remove ticks in the form of small tweezers. But you can use any other tweezers pre-treated with alcohol.

With tweezers, you must carefully grab the body of the tick and remove it, making rotational movements counterclockwise. Do not apply force, squeeze the insect, so as not to infect the wound when crushing the body.

In the absence of tweezers, you need to take a strong thread and tie it on the body of the insect closer to the proboscis with a knot near the skin. Then rotate the ends of the thread as a propeller, or gently remove the tick with swaying movements and place in a jar with a lid.

Craftsmen adapted a disposable sterile syringe to remove the tick, carefully cutting off its tip. The syringe must be tightly attached to the bite and gently pull the piston up, removing the insect.

Do not lubricate the bite site with oil or kerosene: without air, the tick will release infected liquid into the wound - the risk of infection will increase.

A jar of ticks should be delivered to the sanitary epidemiological station for examination. If a tick is infected or if the terrain is not favorable for tick-borne encephalitis, an emergency prophylaxis is given to the child: an anti-mite immunoglobulin is administered as prescribed by the pediatrician (no later than 96 hours after the bite).

For the purpose of prevention, pediatricians can prescribe antiviral drugs (Viferon, Anaferon for children under 14 years of age or Iodantipirin for children after 14 years of age). Other antiviral drugs (Cycloferon, Arbidol, Remantadine) can also be used. They are used from the first day of the bite.

There are currently no vaccines against borreliosis. To prevent this disease, after receiving the result of a tick test, the doctor may prescribe antibiotics.

To make sure that there is no danger after a tick bite, you can examine the child: donate blood for antibodies to pathogens of borreliosis and tick-borne encephalitis 2-3 weeks after the bite in an infectious diseases hospital or virology laboratory.

It is easier to prevent the tick from entering the baby’s skin. If, however, a tick is found, then it is better to go to the hospital to extract it, especially in a small child.With self-removal, all the above rules for removing the tick must be observed.

How to provide first aid if the child is affected by a tick

A tick is a small, inactive arachnid insect that lives in forests, parks, gardens. They live in the grass in shrubs, on low trees.

Ticks feed on small insects and fungi. Blood-sucking ticks appear closer to the middle of spring, and reproduce very quickly. Mid May, June peak tick activity.

May, June is the time when children and their parents are going on vacation, walking in parks, gardens, where they can become a victim of a tick bite.

The mistake is that many people think that ticks jump on people from a tree. The tick falls on the human body from grass or shrubs. The paws of the insect have special claws that allow them to gain a foothold and move around. Ticks can also be brought into the house on pets.

Favorite places for tick bites are: neck, back, head, skin folds, groin.

The tick bite itself is not dangerous. Problems arise if bitten by an infectious tick. For ticks are the main carrier of many infectious diseases (tick-borne encephalitis, hemorrhagic fever, Q fever, tick-borne borreliosis or Lyme disease).

Statistics say that 5-10% of all ticks are carriers of tick-borne encephalitis. That is, the probability of the disease is not so great, but ... .. And if the tick is encephalitis?

Action algorithm

If after a walk you notice in your child’s body or on a ticked tick on the body, it is first necessary to remove it. And the sooner the better. This should be done at the nearest clinic or emergency room, in general, where there is a traumatologist or surgeon.

When pulling the head usually remains in the skin. Before pulling out, you can drip vegetable oil, as it has breathing holes on its body and it will be easier to pull out a tick.

After removing the wound, treat with any antiseptic (iodine zelenka, Betadine) and wash your hands thoroughly. The wound must be treated with an antiseptic every day, it is not necessary to fix it with a bandage. If everything is normal, the wound heals within a week.

If the tick head comes off when removed, which has the appearance of a black dot, it must be removed with a sterile needle (previously calcined over a fire) in the same way as an ordinary splinter.

Removing a tick is not worth it:

The removed tick is placed in a small glass jar along with a piece of cotton or cloth slightly moistened with water. Be sure to close the jar with a tight lid and store in the refrigerator. A tick must be taken for a laboratory test for tick-borne infections within two days.

Typically, the analysis can be done in an infectious diseases hospital, CEC, or in a special laboratory. Analysis time is 1 day. If the tick is infected, they turn to infectious disease specialists who prescribe the appropriate treatment for the pathogen.

According to the literature in endemic areas for Lyme disease, a single dose of doxycycline 200 mg is recommended for 72 hours from a tick bite, which can prevent the development of the disease.

If for some reason you did not pass the bitten tick for research, it is advisable to be observed by an infectious disease specialist for a month.

The best way to prevent tick-borne infections is protection from tick bites.

Tick ​​protection:

• Repellents (insect repellents).
• Vaccination.
• Tick ​​control in garden areas.

Recommendations for protection against tick bites:

Tick ​​bite in a child: symptoms and signs, consequences and actions

Ticks should never be forgotten. After all, with the first rays of the sun, ticks also activate their activity. The peak of their activity is early spring and autumn.

What is the danger of a parasite bite in a child?

When bitten, a tick injects painkillers that may also contain viruses and germs. Ticks carry various infections, the main of which are tick-borne encephalitis and borreliosis. In different regions, ticks are carriers of various infections.

After removing the tick, you can leave it for testing in the laboratory by placing it in a jar. Put a piece of cotton wool moistened with water in the jar with the tick, close the lid tightly, place the jar in the refrigerator.

How and how to remove it yourself?

There are several ways to remove ticks that differ only in the removal tool.

Curved tweezers or clamp. Necessary:

Special hook for removing ticks. It resembles a double-toothed fork. Necessary:

• Insert the tick between the teeth
• Unscrew carefully
• Treat the wound with iodine
• Tick ​​put in a jar for testing in the laboratory
• Wash hands thoroughly.

Coarse thread. Necessary:

1. Make a loop out of thread
2. Grab the tick as close to the proboscis as possible
3. Gently pull, swaying it from side to side
4. Treat the wound with iodine
5. Tick ​​put in a jar for testing in the laboratory
6. Wash the hands

If the tick burst, try (if possible) also to unscrew the head with the proboscis. Since parts of the tick remaining in the skin can cause inflammation or suppuration. If the proboscis remains in the wound, do not worry. Treat the bite site with an antiseptic.

When removing a tick, DO NOT:

Want to know for sure the presence / absence of infection in your body, donate blood:

• By PCR (polymer chain reaction) to tick-borne encephalitis and borreliosis (only the presence of infection can be determined, no concentration) - after 10 days
• For IgM antibodies to encephalitis virus - after 14 days)
• For IgM antibodies to Borrelia - after 21 days
• Blood is taken from a vein in the morning on an empty stomach.

What is tick-borne encephalitis dangerous or consequences

Tick-borne encephalitis is a virus transmitted by a tick. It enters the bloodstream immediately if the tick is contagious. This virus infects the central and peripheral nervous system of a person.

Signs (symptoms) of tick-borne encephalitis appear approximately 8-23 days after a tick bite:

1. Dizziness, sharp headache
2. Fatigue, malaise, and irritability
3. Muscle weakness and muscle pain
4. Sleep disturbance
5. Numbness of the neck
6. Temperature increase
7. Sometimes nausea and vomiting

Prevention is carried out as quickly as possible. Better in the first or third day from the moment of the bite (and not detection!). Antiviral drugs are prescribed as prophylaxis.

If tick-borne encephalitis test is positive, treatment should be started immediately. Treatment: a bed rest, a minimum of movements, a diet that contains B vitamins and ascorbic acid. Plus, the doctor will prescribe the necessary therapy, drugs and vitamins.

If a person has contracted tick-borne encephalitis and has undergone a course of treatment, he develops a stable immunity to this disease for life.

Tick-borne borreliosis or Lyme disease

Tick-borne borreliosis (Lyme disease) is the most common disease transmitted by ticks. A disease that can occur secretly, and then quietly go into a chronic form and lead to disability.

At the site of the bite, a red spot, then the skin turns pale or blue. The outer edge is redder. You can observe the shape of the ring. Such a stain lasts 2-3 weeks without treatment, then disappears.

Emergency prevention

If it is possible to donate blood for antibodies to tick-borne borreliosis 3 weeks after a tick bite, emergency prophylaxis can be omitted. If the result is positive, consult an infectious disease specialist.

Prevention in children. An antibiotic (often Amoxiclav) is used to treat and prevent borelliosis in children (the doctor determines the dosage depending on body weight for 5 days).

You can get infected with boreliosis several times, since immunity is not generated for this disease.

It is important to know that:

Tips:

Follow the recommendations, and if a tick is detected, do not panic. Go to the hospital or carefully unscrew the tick yourself. Remember emergency prevention.

What is the danger to children

A tick bite is not as dangerous as those diseases that a tick carries. There are a large number of diseases, but only two of them cause serious consequences - this is encephalitis borreliosis.

Most often, the tick can be found on the chest or back, as well as in the axillary region, they also cling to where the skin is softer, for example in the inguinal region. Therefore, upon arrival home, it is necessary to undress the child and examine him all. At the same time, a tick can also be found on the baby's head, but this applies only to children under the age of 10 years.

Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t really matter where the tick bit the child. In any case, the incubation period is 10 days, and it is advisable to begin treatment of the disease during this period.

How to remove the parasite?

If nevertheless the tick bit the child, it must be removed. Of course, a trip to a children's (!) Emergency room is ideal, where your child will quickly, correctly and painlessly remove a tick and place it in a special container in which you can pass the tick for analysis.

There is another myth. Ticks are not paratroopers. Their sedentary lifestyle simply does not give them the opportunity to climb trees and "land" on the head of your baby. They find themselves on the neck or head, not because they “jumped” from the tree, but because they got there.

As a rule, ticks sit on tall grass or on the lower branches of shrubs, when a person approaches, they spread their legs and begin to search for their prey, and then just cling to their clothes and crawl up until they reach open areas of skin. As a rule, it is a neck or a head.

First aid

If, nevertheless, the child is bitten by a tick, what to do in this case. First of all, do not panic. It is necessary to remove the tick as soon as possible. If possible, your first-aid kit should have sterile gloves; use them to remove the tick; if not, wash your hands thoroughly.

So, if a child is bitten by a tick, remove it as soon as possible. Take tweezers and try to hook the tick near the proboscis, the closer to the proboscis, the better. DO NOT pull out the tick !!!! In this case, his proboscis may remain in the body of the child, which means that the effect on the body will continue.

In order to pull the tick out of it, you need to shake it a little from side to side. When a tick bites and secretes special saliva, it acts as a cement mortar and fixes the proboscis in human skin. That is why it is so difficult to pull out.

After the extraction process is completed, anoint the affected area with green. In addition, it is necessary to handle the site of the bite 3 days 2 times a day.

The child must be quickly taken to the doctor, and the tick should be put in a jar and brought to the center of the Central Scientific Center, which is in any city. A tick check will be performed here, and a maximum of a week later, parents will be able to find out if their child has bitten an encephalitis tick or a harmless one.

The same thing must be done when the tick has bitten a baby. If there are no tweezers at hand, use an ordinary thread to wrap it around, just as close to the proboscis as possible and pull it out slowly with twisting movements. The tick must be taken away for analysis.

Symptoms

If your child has been bitten by an encephalitis tick, first try to find a bite site. Even if you just found a tick on clothes, inspect the baby. You know the places where a bite mark may remain, so it is important to examine them first. A tick bite looks like a small pimple, with a clear redness forming around it.

The male tick can stick for a maximum of 10-15 minutes, while the female tick can remain up to 10 days. She is able to suck out a huge amount of blood, and she increases in size ten times.

But, if a child is bitten by a tick, other symptoms may appear. So, the bite site, and you can easily find it, will retain a reddish tint for two three days, as with any other type of bite, including mosquitoes.

If everything is normal, then the spot will disappear in three days, even if the proboscis remains in the wound. The proboscis will fall out on its own, there is no need to try to extract it, but in the case of children, it is better to consult in addition.

Now, you know what the symptoms may be when a child is bitten by a tick, which means you can provide medical care to your researcher.

Effects

If you still could not protect the baby and the child was bitten by a tick, the consequences can be varied. The most unpleasant ones are encephalitis and borryliosis.

Encephalitis begins as a common cold. Fever, headaches, aches, sluggish child. Each disease has its own time frame, the average is 10 days, but for encephalitis it is about 7 days, but even after that it is too early to breathe a sigh of relief. This can be done only 21 days after the bite.

In this case, the bite is a spot surrounded by a ring. This should be the reason for an instant visit to a doctor. It is not strange, but this disease is easier to cure, and a positive result occurs in 100% of cases.

Avoiding Bites

How to protect yourself from tick bites. In this case, the situation is ambiguous. It's one thing when you go to the forest for mushrooms and plan to spend quite a lot of time there, but not more than one day.

A completely different situation when you are in the country. At risk are those areas where there is tall grass, water, and the terrain itself is quite wet and shady. Such areas are best avoided.

Nevertheless, for hiking in the forest it is better to dress the child as densely as possible.This does not mean that the child needs to be wrapped, otherwise you can get heat or sunstroke, but pants must be worn, preferably with elastic bands below, a jacket, also with elastic bands and preferably with a hood, as well as a hat. All cuffs should fit snugly against the body. Sports suits are suitable for such walks.

If you are planning a vacation in the country or in a park where ticks can also be found, it is better to use repellents that are sold in any hardware store, along with mosquito repellents.

It is necessary to take into account the age of the child and use those funds that are designed specifically for children. The concentration of substances in such funds is somewhat different.

Vaccinations. The vaccine protects against tick-borne encephalitis well, even taking into account statistics, the likelihood that a child can be bitten by just such a tick is very high. According to statistics, tick-borne encephalitis bites 1 out of 50 people. If the child is bitten by an encephalitis tick, the baby will survive this incident without serious consequences due to vaccination.

So, vaccination can be given to children from the age of one year. The vaccine becomes in the outer surface of the shoulder. Unlike adults, vaccination is given in several stages - 3.

1. The first portion of the vaccine is given either in winter or early spring,
2. The second 1-3 months after the first. It is after the second vaccine that the child develops immunity.
3. The third final vaccine is delivered in a year.

The vaccine is effective for three years, after which it must be repeated again. A simple booster can also be performed.

The scheme may be different depending on the drug, but in most cases it is this one that is used as the most sparing. There are contraindications to the vaccine, which parents should be familiar with:

Similar effects as with DTP, headache, fever, impaired sleep or appetite.

In this case, medical assistance: examination, removal, examination of the tick and treatment will be free of charge, and parents will be able to receive monetary compensation.

What to do if a child is bitten by a tick?

With the onset of the warm season, the problem of tick bites becomes more and more urgent. On average, starting in April, the first cases of tick attacks are recorded, and this danger persists until June.

According to statistics, children are much more likely to suffer from ticks: a growing body no longer has a strong immunity to infections, which can be transmitted by these arthropods.

Symptoms

After a walk with the child in the warm season, in the park, in the forest, in a summer cottage or in a personal plot, it is necessary to examine the body.

Most often, tick bites are observed in the following places in the child's body:

• head;
• neck, especially the area of ​​skin behind the ears;
• chest;
• hands;
• back;
• armpits (found in older children).

With a bite, the tick partially penetrates the skin of the child, and the body remains outside, so it is difficult not to notice it. If the tick is no longer on the site of the bite, a small spot about one centimeter in size will remain.

In addition to external signs, if a child is bitten by a tick, the following symptoms of intoxication of the body may appear (observed only in the case of a bite by a tick-transmitting disease):

1. a significant increase in body temperature (up to forty degrees), accompanied by fever and poorly stabilizing. The duration of such a period can be from one week to 10 days;
2. severe weakness, drowsiness;
3. profuse and frequently recurring vomiting;
4. growing headache;
5. joint aches and sore muscles in the body;
6. redness of the mucous membranes;
7. heart palpitations and various disorders in the work of the cardiovascular system;
8. the presence in the urine of a child of blood inclusions.

In addition, in especially severe cases, neurological symptoms may occur:

What could be the bite of a parasite?

The main danger from a tick bite for a child is that this insect can be a carrier of a large number of infections, the defeat of which can be accompanied by severe consequences, and in some cases even death.

One of the most common diseases that can be transmitted by a tick bite is considered the following.

The incubation period, during which no symptoms can be observed and not manifest, signaling infection of the child, can last from 5 to 25 days.

The main characteristic manifestations of infection are high body temperature of the child, photophobia, severe headaches, loss of consciousness.

Parents should be very careful to monitor the condition of the child who was bitten by a tick, since in some cases, a tick-borne encephalitis infection can cause irreparable damage to the brain and spinal cord with the possible death of the patient.

Tick-borne borreliosis. A disease to which animals are more susceptible, and it is a tick that can transfer pathogens (bacteria) from affected individuals to a child.

The main symptom of intoxication is the signs characteristic of tick-borne encephalitis, however, in addition to them, redness at the site of the tick bite can also be added, which can increase up to ten centimeters in a few days.

This rash on the body is called a migrating annular erythema and, if the signs of the disease are recognized in time and appropriate treatment is prescribed, the patient can recover. If the disease goes into a chronic form, then this can provoke irreversible changes in the joints of the child, the cardiovascular and nervous system.

Tick-borne spotted fever. They have an incubation period of up to two weeks and are characterized by an acute onset of the course of the disease. A characteristic feature of infection is manifested weakness, a headache in a child and general intoxication of the body.

What to do?

Tick ​​extraction. First of all, you need to remove the insect as soon as possible. To carry out this action, the entire surface of the tick body is lubricated with oil or fat in order to block the access of oxygen to it.

Be sure to check whether there are any tick paws or jaws in the child’s skin - if any, they are removed using a sterile needle or tweezers with sharp ends.

Post Retrieval Actions

After extraction, further actions with the tick may be as follows:

• it can be destroyed by burning (only this way can guarantee that the infected tick does no harm to anyone);
• if it is necessary to determine the infection with tick-borne encephalitis, the extracted tick is placed in a jar of water, tightly covered with a lid and carried for analysis to a nearby infectious ward or trauma center. After analyzing the presence of pathogens, you will either reassure yourself, or you will be able to take measures to alleviate the symptoms of the disease and speed up recovery.

After a child bites a tick, parents need to carefully monitor the condition and changes in the child’s behavior, as well as the appearance of the bite site.

It is recommended that even in the absence of symptoms of intoxication of the body, after a two to three weeks after the bite, a general blood test be taken.

What can not be done

When a tick bite, the following actions are prohibited:

1. touch the tick with bare hands, since it is likely to become infected in this way due to a bite;
2. when pulling out a tick, in no case can a situation be allowed when its body will be crushed. Otherwise, a dangerous infection (if any) will necessarily penetrate the body of the child;
3. contrary to popular belief that in order for the tick to come out on its own, it needs to be spread with some kind of solution that has an unpleasant odor (nail polish remover, gasoline, cleaning agent), this should not be done. Such a solution can have the opposite effect - a tick, having sensed a threat to its life, can inject toxins into the child’s body at an instinctive level, which will inevitably enter the bloodstream and infect it.

According to statistics, often when trying to kill a tick (by treating the site of the bite with any substance), a child's infection can occur much more often than in cases where the insect is removed in a neat way.

Prevention measures, vaccination

First of all, to avoid getting a tick on your child’s body and prevent dangerous bites, you should know the following:

There is also vaccination to prevent tick bites and, as a result, further infection of the child.

Vaccination prophylaxis may be as follows:

When going with a child for a walk in the summer, remember about precautions, try to wear closed clothing in light colors, on which it will be easier to notice an insect.

And if the tick still bites the child, do not stay idle, because the precautions taken in time will help preserve his life and health.