WOUND CARE

Care of your Wound

• Keep the wound covered until healed- it is fine for the original dressing to remain on until your sutures are removed.
• If your wound looks unclean, becomes moist or stained and you need to change the dressing please use normal saline or salty water on gauze, gently swab and then re-cover. The wound should be dry before re-covering. There is no benefit to using Dettol, Betadine or Savlon etc - in fact these products may delay healing.
• Keep the wound dry.
• Try to limit/reduce the amount of movement of the affected area until the sutures are removed.

Pain

• Pain is usually minimal and able to be controlled with paracetamol. Take 2 tablets up to 4 times a day as required. If this does not help please contact the surgery. Your wound may be sore for a day or two. If the wound becomes increasingly painful or tender, inflamed, warm or you develop a fever please contact us immediately during business hours or your local GP/local hospital after hours.

Bleeding

• There may be a small amount of bleeding from you excision on the first day. This is NORMAL. Please do not disturb the dressing.
• If the bleeding is excessive (completely soils the dressing) or persistant, apply firm steady pressure over the wound site (gauze squares or tissue are perfect for this) for 10 minutes.
• If bleeding continues call the surgery or your after hours service provider. Keep applying pressure.