Wound management

Continued from
last week

Last week, we had reached the point where, after cleans-ing the wound and removing dead tissue (debriding), a decision must be as to whether the wound will be closed, or managed as an open wound. Certain important considerations must be factored into the final decision. They are:

(1) Do we have enough skin available to effect an adequate surgical closure? In other words, if there has been great skin loss, we may not be able to bring the wound edges together to ensure a successful and durable closure of the wound. Sometimes the wound, which has been sutured shut,