Acute Wounds Closed Pain-Fee and with Invisible Scars Through Use of Drug-Free Polymeric Membrane Dressings

Topic: Acute wounds often are painful; while healing they can reduce patients‘activities of daily living and are often associated with unsightly scars.

Purpose: Present cases which illustrate unique clinical benefits of using drug-free dressings which limit edema, inflammation and pain associated with acute wounds while also supporting robust healing.

Patient descriptions: Patient 1, a 31 year old male elite level competitive bicycle racer, incurred road rash over 30 % of his back in a race crash. Emergency response staff cleansed the wounds and covered them with silicone dressings.  His national championship race was 7 days later. His pain was so severe he realized he would not be able to continue training for the championship race. Two hours later the silicone dressings were replaced with polymeric membrane dressings.

Patient 2 is a 50 year old male marathon runner who fell during a race which created a 2cm long chin laceration exposing bone. Bleeding profusely, the runner discontinued participation in the marathon, returned to his vehicle and placed a polymeric membrane dressing on the injury in order to stop the bleeding.

Patient 3 is a 58 year old male with surgically excised facial squamous cancer which was allowed to close by secondary intention. Immediately after excision, polymeric membrane dressings were placed on the excision site.

Outcomes: All three patients, without use of pain medication, were pain free within-in hours of initiating the use of polymeric membrane dressings. They all remarked how the edema and inflammation they had expected was dramatically reduced and that the wounds closed faster than they anticipated based on past experience. The  cyclist was able to continue his training and won the national title the following week-end. Both the marathon runner’s wound and the facial excised lesion closed with invisible scars even though the wounds were closed without stitches.