Removing a tic from a patient - Page 2

Interesting. I've pulled ticks off dozens of pts over the years, and not once has anyone suggested saving the tick or sending it to the lab for testing. Grosses me out every time. I hate morel hunting season. All those hunters come in later for their various illnesses/injuries/incidental issues, and if they've been morel hunting, we search for ticks. Last year I had an older fellow, in with ARF, morel hunting the day before, I pulled 18 ticks off him, including 7 from his testicles and gluteal fold. Jesus, people, use some deet so I don't have to dig through your bits and pieces.

Ewww.

What's a "morel"?

In a hospital setting.. tick removal should be brought to the doctors attention and performed by the physician. It is a parasite that needs professional treatment and subsequent evaluation.

That being said.. I had one in my scalp (ACCK) didn't know what it was until I pulled that sucker (no pun intended )out!

Little x wiggled his little legs at me after I yanked him out. GEEROSS.

Mushroom.

Me too I freaked out for ages! I kept asking other staff at work to check I wasn't getting a bulls-eye on my scalp LOL.
I was convinced for days that my head ached where it had been, last day I went out gardening

I would tell the MD that the patient has a tick and get an order to remove it just to CYA. If the patient get necrotizing fasciitis and you didn't tell anyone before you pulled it......trust me your behind will be the one in the sling for the FIRST thing the MD will say is the you never told him and he would have (of course) immediately removed it himself.

I hate those nasty things. What use are they anyhow? No one eats them, they serve the animal population not good and are harmful to humans. I hate those nasty bugs. I live in the northeast and they are present in abundance. YUCK! I check my dog and kids ALL the time. and my son still got a bullseye with me NEVER finding the %&(%^&*^&R tick!

Grrrrrrrrrrr

Lmao!! I was thinking the same thing! I can only imagine the stuff he sends to the lab lol. I'm sure the lab folks appease his Hollywood drive, but most of his submissions get filed in the round cabinet

Testing of Ticks
People who have removed a tick often wonder if they should have it tested. Some state or local health departments offer tick identification and testing as a community service or for research purposes (such as evaluating infection rates among ticks in an area). Check with your health department; the phone number is usually found in the government pages of the telephone book or online.
CDC - Diagnosis and Treatment - Testing of Ticks - Lyme Disease

tick! tick! tics are behavioral, ticks are insects. and they are food for many birds; if you keep chickens or have wild turkeys around that really keeps them down.

we live in one of the three counties with the highest incidence of lyme disease in the us, so we're always very aware of ticks. it's estimated that a third of the year-round population on martha's vineyard has lyme antibodies. my dh had lyme from a tick he picked up at a campground in another state, ironically. my nephew in yet another state came home from scout camp and a month later got sick, missing a year of school despite having the biggest work-up known to medicine (dad is a hotshot cardiologist) until one day his mom woke up and remembered that the tick she got off his head when he came home was in the freezer, taped to an index card with the date on it. bingo: lyme. my dad died with complications from lyme, erlichiosis, and babesiosis, all tick-borne, and proof you can always have more than one thing wrong with you. our cats bring them in all the time, usually dog ticks but occasionally deer ticks (which actually spend a lot of their lives on mice...hence the cats' exposure).

if this patient was on hospice it's a moot point. pull it off, entomb in a small length of scotch tape (we have a dispenser on our bedside table, since the cats seem to come to us first) and toss in the wastebasket. wash your hands, and swab the site with an alcowipe.

washing a tick down the sink won't work-- they don't drown and will crawl back up. once just for fun i submerged one in a glass of water to see how long it would take to run out of oxygen-- it was more than 24 hours and it was still crawling around in there.

otherwise, the best use for acrylic nails is as tick-removal tools: grab that little head and wiggle it right out. they also make nifty little tick tools; find them in any camping supply catalog. mine looks like little plastic wire-cutting pliers and you sort of grab and scoop 'em right off the skin, and it has a small lens in the handle to examine the tick and site to see if the tick is intact when removed. if we're at camp i scotch-tape them to a card with the date and place and kid's name, and put it in a ziplock bag and put the bag in the freezer for mom to take home and put in hers. most of the time there's no infection, but if there is, the tick can be tested. the standard is not to test tick or give antibiotics unless there are symptoms. your public health officer can tell you if they want yours for epidemiological study.

Testing the tick? Seriously? You've got to be kidding me. The tick has to be fastened for over 48 hours in order to transmit any disease, unless you squeeze the abdomen and force them to disgorge the contents into the bloodstream. If your patient shows clinical signs - treat with antibiotics. Both Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Lyme Disease - the major tick-borne illnesses - are 100% treatable in the early stages with simple $4 antibiotic prescriptions from Wal-Mart. But the best treatment is prevention - daily tick checks for people in tick prone areas and removal if ticks are found. If you remove the creatures within 24 hours of attachment, you have minimal danger of a systemic infection.

Bringing a tick into the hospital to be tested is as insane as bringing a venomous (or potentially venomous) snake in. Don't do it, please.

I do like the idea of saving the thing on the index card with the date in the freezer in case symptoms appear - that's an excellent thought. But if you're in the backcountry - just throw the thing away and make note of the date and time of the bite. If within a couple weeks your patient is lethargic and depressed - bingo.

Wilderness First Aid Certified, Wilderness First Responder, and working on an eventual Fellowship in Wilderness Medicine.