A bandage is a piece of material or a medical device used as support for a wound or injury, or to provide compression. Bandages used in healing protect the area from contamination and further trauma. Tight bandages can be used to slow blood flow to an extremity, such as when a leg or arm is bleeding heavily.
The most common type of bandage is the gauze bandage, a woven strip of material. A gauze bandage can come in any number of widths and lengths and can be used for almost any bandage application, including holding a dressing in place.
Compression bandages, or elastic bandages, refers to a wide variety of bandages with many different applications such as with kinesio tape used in sports medicine.
Also known as a cravat bandage, a triangular bandage is a piece of cloth put into a right-angled triangle, and often provided with safety pins to secure it in place. It can be used fully unrolled as a sling, folded as a normal bandage, or for specialized applications, such as on the head. The Scouting movement popularized the use of this bandage in many of their first aid lessons, as a part of the uniform is a neckerchief which can easily be folded to form a cravat.
A new type of bandage was invented in 2016; inspired by the art of kirigami, it uses parallel slits to better fit areas of the body that bend. The bandages have been produced with 3D-printed molds.
