You may think that you will be fine after getting the operation done. This can be right, but up to some extent. If you think you will not need any medicine and supportive treatment after that, you may be wrong. It is because you may need care for your wound.
If you do not take care of it, complications can occur. Therefore you need to know how to take care of your wound. In this article, we will tell you that. If you need to get operated on, you can visit a general surgeon.
Tips to Take Care of Your Wound After Surgery
At the time of discharge from the hospital, your healthcare provider will give you instructions that will help protect your wound from infections. They will also tell you when and how you should open the bandage and change it. If you do not take care of it in the right way and let it get exposed to everything, an infection can occur.
Wound infection is quite common and hard to get rid of. It happens because your skin contains many germs on its surface. When a wound remains open, it can enter your body. The infection of the wound or stitches should never be taken lightly as it can cause abscess and septicemia, a life-threatening condition.
In the recovery phase after the operation, if you have a complaint of wound pain or fever, you should visit your healthcare provider soon. To handle your wound, keep the following things in mind;
Wash your hands with soap for at least 40 seconds, clean it with a clean cloth, and then touch your bandage to open it. If you do that without washing your hands properly, the germs from your hand can get transmitted to the wound, which may enter inside of your body, causing infection.
To clean the skin around stitches, you can use a clean gauze piece dipped in pyodine or soap water. Make sure you use a new gauze piece every time. Discard it once used.
Do not use any herbal product or oil for your wound healing without consulting it with your doctor. However, sometimes your healthcare provider may allow you to use them.
Your doctor may ask you to wash the wound with sterile normal saline and dab it lightly. If you have pain or pus in the wound, it can be a sign of infection. Therefore you should consult with your doctor soon.
Do not ignore those symptoms.
Protect your wound from getting wet in the initial stage. Therefore you may need to avoid a shower in the first 24 hours. However, you can do that from the second day. After you are done with the shower, you must dry the wound completely.
Instead of bathing, it is better to shower. If you spend too much time in the water, your wound can soften, which can cause stitches to open.
Until your wound has fully healed, try restricting physical activities. Ask your healthcare provider how much and for how long you can do a certain activity.
But make sure not to lift strenuous weights. Lifting weights and doing physical activity can cause your stitches to open, leading to slowed healing.
If your wound bleeds and bandage gets bloody, make sure to change it soon. Keeping blood-containing bandages can increase the risk of infections.
If your wound is bleeding and does not stops upon pressure application, contact your healthcare provider soon.
Dissolvable stitches do not need to get removed. But the ones that are undissolvable may need to get pulled out after 7 to 10 days when your skin heals. If you have an infection in your stitches postoperatively, you can visit oladoc.com for more information.
