What to do with a burn of the tongue - how to treat and relieve pain

Everyone can burn themselves with hot tea or another drink. After such an incident, taste perception is disturbed, and discomfort arises, which I want to get rid of as soon as possible. But not everyone knows what to do with a burn of the tongue with boiling water or a chemical substance. Moreover, many actions are prohibited, as they can lead to even more dire consequences.

Types of burns of the tongue and their consequences

In everyday life, people are more likely to experience thermal burns of the tongue that occur when drinking hot tea, coffee, and food. But there are other types of burns:

• Chemical - in contact with aggressive chemicals and chemicals.
• Electric - with damage to the organ of taste by electric shock.
• Radiation - when exposed to radiation.

Light thermal lesions that occur without complications are treated at home. Extensive thermal, as well as chemical, electrical and radiation burns of soft tissues in the oral cavity can lead to very dangerous consequences, therefore they should be treated under the supervision of a doctor.

In addition to a temporary or irreversible loss of sensitivity of the tongue, a violation of taste perception, burns are fraught with the development of glossitis - infectious inflammation. There may be digestive problems and disturbances in the functioning of internal organs. Without urgent medical care, death can occur due to blood loss, pain shock, dysfunction of vital organs.

The degree of burns on the tongue: symptoms and photos

Depending on how badly damaged soft tissues, there are such degrees of burns:

Burns of the last degree can provoke pain shock. The lesion can spread to the entire surface of the oral cavity, throat. Perhaps a state of panic.

If the chemical that caused the burn penetrates the digestive tract, abdominal pain may appear. With electrical damage, typical pain may be absent, but convulsions, respiratory failure, and fainting are possible. With radiation burning, bleeding of the mucous membrane of the oral cavity is observed, cracks in the tongue appear, dry mouth appears, lymph nodes swell.

How to treat a burnt tongue

The choice of the method of first aid depends entirely on the type and degree of damage. With the most common mild thermal burns, the following actions are possible:

• Resorption of pain and burning helps resorption of ice cubes, previously moistened in water. You can use clean, frozen water or fruit ice, or simply rinse your mouth with cold water. If there is no water, you can cool the burned organ of taste by breathing with your mouth.
• Those who have burnt their tongue with hot tea can make lotions from dairy products: take cold milk or yogurt and hold it in your mouth.
• Sugar will help relieve pain with minor injuries.You need to put it on the burned area and hold for a minute. Instead of sugar, you can use honey, but only in the absence of allergies.
• Lightly salted water can not only reduce pain, but also disinfect the wound to prevent complications.

For quick healing of a burnt tongue, you can use cough drops with menthol. To prevent infection of the lesion by bacteria, you can rinse your mouth with furatsilinovoy solution or potassium permanganate. Before eliminating the discomfort, hot, spicy, salty and sour foods should not be taken.

If blisters and necrotic ulcers appear in the tongue, you should definitely contact a doctor. Deep thermal, chemical and radiation damage to tissues often leads to their infection and pain shock.

For second, third and fourth degree burns, doctors prescribe painkillers, vitamins and, if necessary, undergo surgical treatment.

What can not be treated for burns on the tongue

Those who have burnt their tongues with boiling water should not do the following:

• Treat the tongue with products designed to treat skin burns. When ingested, drugs for external use penetrate the digestive tract and can cause poisoning.
• Remove dead tissue from the tongue with sharp objects at hand. Touch blisters, ulcers. Such actions can lead to infection of the wound and the development of violent inflammation.
• Self-select drugs to relieve pain and inflammation. Self-medication is especially dangerous for babies, pregnant women, people with chronic diseases. With a first-degree burn, the pain is not too intense, you can get rid of it with folk remedies. In the second, third and fourth degrees of damage, treatment is always prescribed by a doctor.

Chemical, electrical and radiation burns of the tongue

With a burn of the tongue caused by spicy food, you can eliminate the discomfort on your own. Often such consequences occur after eating pepper dishes. Its aggressive component - capsaicin - strongly irritates not only the mucous membrane of the oral cavity, but also the skin. You can get rid of it by drinking a glass of milk or a sour-milk drink or eating a piece of milk chocolate or bread.

With a chemical burn of the tongue, you must call an ambulance. To make it easier for the doctor to cure the victim, you need to try to determine the substance that caused the burn. Before the ambulance arrives, you can neutralize the effect of the substance and remove its remains from the oral cavity yourself:

• If acid gets into the mouth, rinse the victim’s mouth with a soda solution.
• When burning with alkali, you need to make a weak solution of vinegar or citric acid and rinse the victim’s mouth with it.

Burns caused by radioactive substances and electricity cannot be fought at home. Both radiation and current can cause irreparable damage to vital organs, so urgent complex therapy is needed in such incidents.

Preventive actions

Most often, such injuries occur in people who are used to eating on the go or eating too sharp dishes. To prevent burns of the tongue, you need to follow the nutrition rules, carefully monitor what is in a glass or in a plate - often people confuse bottles with water and toxic household substances.

When adding spices to dishes, you should know the measure. Some people like the burning taste of food, but you need to remember that burns also remain in the stomach, which in the future provoke the development of gastritis and more dangerous diseases.

Adults should watch over the kids, because they do not realize the danger of a particular situation and can drink boiling water or eat any toxic substance that has come to hand. The use of electrical appliances by children must be prevented.

When undergoing radiation therapy, you should carefully monitor your well-being and consult a doctor if you suspect a burn.During the procedure, you must strictly follow the rules that the doctor reports.

A burn of the tongue can be an absolutely harmless injury, but sometimes such damage can lead to serious consequences. Those who burned their tongue with boiling water can relieve pain at home. But in case of serious damage to the soft tissues of the oral cavity with electric shock, chemicals and radiation, an ambulance must be urgently called.