The way clinicians apply dressings in a way that seems effortless and no-nonsense might make you think that there isn’t much thought required in what they are applying and why, but the world of wound dressings is much more complex than you might know. There are approximately 6 thousand dressings available in the medical community for treating patients, so choosing the right for the job is far from a simple task. In this article, we take a look at advanced wound care specifically to give you a better idea of what kinds of wound dressings are available for treatment and aftercare.
An introduction to advanced wound care dressings
When it comes to injuries that result in breaks in the skin, treatment should ideally be applied as quickly as possible to assist with the recovery process – the problem is that there are a lot of different kinds of wounds, people and an advanced wound dressing should ideally cater to all of these factors in the most effective way possible. These advanced dressings are intended to manage more complicated injuries, which makes the appropriate selection of a dressing even more difficult in some instances. To give you an idea of what a doctor’s options are, we think it might be useful to go through some of the dressings they have to choose from when managing advanced wounds. A good place to start is antimicrobials – Antimicrobials are also an important way to stave off infection that can develop through complex wounds, and can come in a variety of forms. These include beads, creams, foams, gels, ointments, pads, pastes, powders, and more. It is also possible to impregnate these materials with elements such as silver, cadexomer iodine and iodine tincture to further increase antimicrobial properties.
More wound care dressings for advanced wounds
Although you might be familiar with things like antimicrobials, there a lot of other wound dressings that you might not be as familiar with, with many of these “impregnated” with addition materials to increase their antimicrobial properties. Alginates are interestingly made from fibres derived from seaweed and kelp and can be impregnated with calcium, silver, or honey in their pad or rope forms. Cadexomer Iodine contains 0.9% iodine but is not to be applied in cases where patients might have known or suspected iodine sensitivity – this will be addressed by the medical practitioner beforehand. You might be familiar with collagen as a supplement for improving skin health and strengthening bones, but as a wound dressing it is available in pad, sheet, particle and powder form and can be impregnated with silver. Finally, there’s a very interesting dressing you might not know about – medical grade honey is readily available as a gauze, gel or sheet and is applied for its impressive antimicrobial properties.
Keep an eye on your next wound dressing
A medical healthcare professional choosing the right wound dressing for the task at hand is by no means an easy feat – they will typically have to ask themselves a series of questions to determine the best approach and applicability of certain dressings to the task at hand. With this in mind, it can be considered a kind of puzzle for a lot of practitioners, so its worth asking them why they choose a certain dressing in the future – it might provide you with some very interesting and often unexpected information.
