Epistaxis refers to bleeding inside the nasal cavity and is a commonly-seen emergency. It may result from many diseases. It may occur in people at all ages and the sick rate is higher in children, middle-aged and old people.
The causes of epistaxis mainly include two types: local causes and general causes. Local causes are less, mainly including nasal trauma, inflammation of nasal cavity, tumour of nasal cavity and sinuses, deviation of nasal septum; general causes give rise to more cases of nasal hemorrhage, chiefly including elevation of vascular arterial pressure and elevation of vascular venous pressure due to some diseases, or increased fragility of blood vessels and dysfunction of blood coagulation. For instance,acute febrile infectious diseases like influenza, measles,hemorrhagic fever, typhoid and malaria, cardiovascular diseases like hypertension, arteriosclerosis and cardiopathy, hematopathy, dystrophy or avitaminosis, chronic visceral diseases of the liver, spleen and kidney, rheumatic fever as well as during menstrual period and at pregnant stage, etc. Nasal bleeding easily occurs in all the above cases. Continue to read Causes of Nasal Bleeding in TCM.
Nasal hemorrhage is called "Binfi" (nasal bleeding) in TCM. TCM believes the pathogenic factors of nasal hemorrhage mainly lies in the fact that fire and heat due to many causes rise to scorch the nose or that qi deficiency fails to keep blood circulating within blood vessels. The main pathogenesis falls into two types: asthenia and sthenia. In the case of sthenia, when fire and heat of lung,stomach and liver meridians rise to scorch the nose, this will injure nasal superficial venules, and force blood to flow out of vessels, giving rise to nasal hemorrahge. In the case of asthenia, when yin deficiency causes hyperactive fire, asthenic fire will scorch nasal blood vessels, giving rise to nasal bleeding, or when qi of the spleen is deficient, the spleen will fail to keep blood circulating within blood vessels, causing rupture of blood vessels to bleed.
