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Calcium alginate gauze on open surgical wound, anyone?

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Ostomies
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Posted 5/21/2013 7:57 PM (GMT 0)
Saw a very experienced local stoma nurse who has shifted me from my 3x daily packing of an opened incission, to a once per two days technique with a calcium alginate gauze. Going from packing this thing 3x a day to 0.5x a day is simply awesome.... And she is convinced it will heal faster this way. Was just curious if anyone else has experience with this other method- crossing my fingers that it will help, not hurt healing. The 3x a day method with standard gauze sure seemed very traumatic.
Posted 5/21/2013 9:00 PM (GMT 0)
I haven't used that on a surgical wound, but I use it all the time on my pyoderma gangrenosum (autoimmune skin ulcers), also at the recommendations of my stoma nurses (Cleveland Clinic). The gauze has anti-microbrial properties.

Stoma nurses are typically full WOCN (Wound, ostomy and continence nurses). They handle all kinds of things that break through the skin (burns, infected deep cuts, etc.). They know their incisions :).
Posted 5/21/2013 10:37 PM (GMT 0)
I used the silver alginate -- same thing but w/silver in it (antimicrobial). It absorbs a lot of liquid and kind of turns into a gooey mess... I had unrelated problems so my wound hung on for a long time (butt wound), but I think it can be very effective.

One of the nurses told me that the basic principle of wound care is "if it's wet, make it dry; if it's dry, make it wet." The alginate will dry out your wound much better than the gauze does.
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