Wound care treatments depend on the severity of your wounds. Whether it’s a small scrape or an extreme cut, each one needs some attention and care to make way for proper healing. Otherwise, you can be at risk for infection.
Doctors check and assess a patient’s wound first before they determine the type of treatment that it needs. Usually, it would depend on the wound’s classification: acute or chronic. Here are their differences.
Acute vs. Chronic Wounds
Wound care classifies wounds as acute or chronic. While there’s no standard definition for the two, each one is easily distinguished. The easiest way to know is through its healing period.
Acute wounds have a short duration of healing. From getting the wound, it should go through the normal stages of healing: hemostasis, inflammation, proliferation, and remodeling. This wound often shows signs of healing in four weeks or less.
Chronic wounds, on the other hand, don’t go through a normal healing process. If it’s not showing all the signs of a normal healing process after four weeks, then it requires professional attention. Wounds often become chronic for a few possible reasons: inflammation due to infection, hypoxia, poor nutrition, and some others.
Common Wound Care and Treatment
As mentioned, wound care depends on the wound’s current state. To be familiar with the possible procedures for healing, here is a couple of the most common wound care treatments available.
Clean Surgical Wound Treatment – This is the first treatment you get right after your injury. Ideally, your wound requires treatment right away. However, in some cases, this procedure is doable within the first eight hours of injury.
Skin grafting – Often performed to close a wide-open wound. Other than that, it stops electrolyte and fluid loss and reduces the risk of infection. There are two types of skin graft: the full thickness and the split-thickness skin graft.
Possible Risks, Complications, and Their Treatment
Sometimes, despite best efforts, complications happen on the wound after treatment. To raise awareness, here are some of those complications or risks and how doctors will treat them.
Hematoma and Seroma – When coagulation fails, blood or serum collects itself. If this happens, the wound area can have pain, swelling, as well as drainage. If the complication becomes large and symptomatic, the wound will need exploring, draining, and packing.
Fascial dehiscence – This complication is an example in abdominal surgical incisions. It brings fascial disruption when tension occurs in the abdominal wall and causes to overcome tissue or suture strength. Early dehiscence (less than 14 days) often requires exploration and debridement and should prevent late dehiscence from occurring.
Self and Home Wound Care
Finally, wound care might depend on you. Keep in mind that your wound and its healing relies on how quickly you get treatment. After an injury, seek medical care as soon as possible.
Once you get initial treatment, follow your doctor’s orders for self or home care in order to make way for proper healing.
In the end, always remember that you should always turn to your doctors if you have any concerns about the care, treatment, and healing of your wound.
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