Bruises

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Basics

• Summary
• Start Here
• Treatments and Therapies

Learn More

• Specifics

See, Play and Learn

• Images

Research

• Clinical Trials
• Journal Articles

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For You

• Children
• Teenagers
• Older Adults
• Patient Handouts

Summary

A bruise is a mark on your skin caused by blood trapped under the surface. It happens when an injury crushes small blood vessels but does not break the skin. Those vessels break open and leak blood under the skin.

Bruises are often painful and swollen. You can get skin, muscle and bone bruises. Bone bruises are the most serious.

It can take months for a bruise to fade, but most last about two weeks. They start off a reddish color, and then turn bluish-purple and greenish-yellow before returning to normal. To reduce bruising, ice the injured area and elevate it above your heart. See your health care provider if you seem to bruise for no reason, or if the bruise appears to be infected.

Start Here

• Bruises (Nemours Foundation)
• Bruising Questions: The What, Why, and How of Bruises (National Institutes of Health) Also in Spanish

Treatments and Therapies

• Black Eye: First Aid (Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research) Also in Spanish
• Bruises, First Aid (VisualDX)

Specifics

• Black Eye (American Academy of Ophthalmology) Also in Spanish
• Bruising Hands and Arms (American Osteopathic College of Dermatology)
• Immune Thrombocytopenia (ITP) (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute) Also in Spanish

Images

• Bruise healing - series (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish

Clinical Trials

• ClinicalTrials.gov: Contusions (National Institutes of Health)
• ClinicalTrials.gov: Hematoma (National Institutes of Health)

Journal Articles References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine)

• Article: Examining the use of alternative light sources in medico-legal assessments of...
• Article: Exogenous surfactant for lung contusion causing ARDS: A systematic review of...
• Article: Scratch…Descriptive epidemiologic study of billiards-related injuries.
• Bruises -- see more articles

Children

• Black Eyes (For Parents) (Nemours Foundation) Also in Spanish
• Immune Thrombocytopenia (For Parents) (Nemours Foundation) Also in Spanish
• Subconjunctival Hemorrhage (For Parents) (Nemours Foundation) Also in Spanish
• What's a Bruise? (Nemours Foundation) Also in Spanish

Teenagers

• Quadriceps Contusion (Nemours Foundation) Also in Spanish

Older Adults

• Easy Bruising: Why Does It Happen (Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research) Also in Spanish

Patient Handouts

• Bleeding into the skin (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish
• Bruise (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish