Surgical infected wounds with deep narrow cavity treated with silver Rope Dressing

PROBLEM/GOAL: Infected surgical wounds are painful and many times necessitate long hospitalization for dressing change and pain control. Many times the large infected cavity is not well drained with relatively small skin opening. The common wound packing gauze has limited absorptive capacity and is very painful to insert and extract. RATIONALE/MATERIALS: The new mesh reinforced, silver polymeric membrane rope cavity filler is non-adherent and reduces pain, kills bacteria and cleanses continuously. Due to its supporting mesh and small diameter, this new rope cavity filler can be easily introduced into a narrow opening, even by family members. METHODOLOGY: Six patients with surgical I&D of acute abscesses in different parts of the body were treated with the Polymeric membrane silver rope dressing. The dressing were changed every 1-3 days. RESULTS: At one week, all patients experienced pain decreases from 6-10/10 to 1-3/10. Infection and periwound maceration resolved, and the original wounds cavity decreased in 50-80%. At four weeks, almost all the wounds were closed with an average pain score of 0-1/10. The dressing change were done mostly by the patients families almost with no associated pain. CONCLUSION: A user-friendly effective way to support healing in post I&D infected wounds has long eluded wound specialists. The new silver polymeric membrane rope cavity filler addressed all of the problems of these wounds in these challenging example cases.