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6 Tips for Dressing Foot Wounds at Home
For the millions of people who are dealing with slow-healing wounds — diabetic foot ulcers alone affect nearly 19 million people around the globe each year — wound care can be a daunting process.
Managing a diabetic foot ulcer or another type of slow-healing wound is challenging because it requires a very high level of vigilance and care, and double board-certified wound specialist Dr. Thomas Rambacher and our team at Foot Ankle Leg Wound Care Orange County are more than equal to the challenge. But what about the care you need to provide at home, especially for dressing changes? Here, we review a few key tips for swapping out dressings for problematic foot, ankle, or leg wounds.
1. Use only the products that we recommend or supply
The first rule of thumb when dealing with dressing changes for your wound or ulcer at home is to make sure that you're only using the products that we’ve outlined or provided. Slow-healing wounds often require specialized, advanced prescription wound care products, such as antimicrobial, or silver, dressings, so it’s important to only use the dressings and products we prescribe.
2. Get your supplies together
If you need to change dressings at home, it’s a great idea to create a devoted care kit in one place where you have everything you need, including:
- Sterile gloves
- Gentle cleansers
- Saline solutions
- Clean and sterile gauze
- Prescription wound care products
- Medical tape
As well, make sure you’ve got a bag or garbage can close by where you can toss the old dressings.
3. Cleanliness is key
When you have a slow-healing wound, the biggest threat is infection so you need to make sure that you’re working in a clean, well-lit environment. Before you touch anything, including the wound and the new dressings, please wash your hands for a good 20-30 seconds. Then, dry them off and put on the sterile gloves.
4. Remove your old dressing carefully
Once you’re ready, you can peel off the old dressing using great care. If it sticks, you can use a saline spray to loosen the dressing.
5. Quickly evaluate the wound
Once you remove the old dressing, give your wound a close look to make sure there aren't any concerning changes, such as an increase in odor, more discharge, or a change in size. If you notice anything different, please report it to us straight away.
Whether you see something concerning or not, please redress the wound in either case.
6. Redress the wound quickly
Using only cleansers that we’ve preapproved and saline solution, you can gently clean the wound and then place a new dressing over it as quickly as possible to minimize exposure and drying out. Again, please use only the dressings and products that we’ve chosen as other products, such as hydrogen peroxide, can do far more harm to your wound than good.
Rest assured, we’ll go over this thoroughly before we send you home to do your own wound dressing changes and, if you have any questions, we’re just a phone call away.
In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about wound dressing at home, we invite you to call our office in Mission Viejo, California, at 949-832-6018 or request an appointment online today.