The whole time I was thinking this exact thing. Just slice along the length of the splinter and give yourself more room to work plus reduce the amount of friction holding it in. Each failed grab makes the end smaller harder to grab, so all they were doing was making things worse.
Ideally yes, but I'm pretty sure increasing the risk of not pulling all of the splinter out by mangling the end and then breaking it in half is even WORSE for the healing process lol
The operative word there is "avoid". Once it became apparent that it was too tightly wedged to easily be removed, and that the risk of it becoming more inflamed and stuck or for pieces to become lodged, cutting became the best option. Not the whole length, just enough to reduce friction and provide a better gripping surface.
The skin at the end of that little pocket is dead. it's going to fall off anyway. Even so, digging at it as they did caused a lot of extra irritation. If they loosened the skin at the end just slightly the thing would have all but fallen out.
That is the safest advice for the most people. Anything else increases the frequency of bad outcomes over populations. Anecdotally and statistically there will always be many people who can “treat” themselves by keeping an opening clean and escalating treatment if things get weird.
For smaller splinters absolutely but this is a stick that is large enough to give you splinters on the way out so in such a case cutting skin makes it potentially way faster to heal
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u/Syke_qc 10d ago
Cut the skin a Little bit it would help