wound care ointment

Wound care ointment is not an IQ tax. It can speed up the healing by about 30% and reduce the probability of scarring by more than 40% compared with traditional dry care methods for daily small wounds that meet the cleanliness standards and have less exudation. However, choosing the wrong category and using it in the wrong scenario will slow down recovery and even cause infection.

Last month, I was frying fried pork at home and my arm was burned with three blisters the size of peanuts from the spilled oil. I gasped in pain at the time. I originally wanted to apply the iodophor the old way and let it dry, but the nurse from the burn department next door happened to borrow soy sauce and gave me a growth factor ointment she brought with her. She asked me to wrap it in a thin layer of sterile gauze after applying it. I was prepared for a week of pain and a brown mark for more than half a year, but the pain disappeared the next day, the scab fell off in three days, and now I can't even find a mark.

I went to her department to attend a popular science lecture before, and I saw two doctors arguing about this thing - the old doctor who was about to retire said that in the past, small wounds were treated by leaving them open to dry, and the scabs would just fall off. Applying ointment would cause bacteria to breed easily.； The young burn doctor next to him pulled out a clinical guide on the spot to refute, saying that epidermal cells crawl twice as fast in a humid environment as in a dry environment, and hard scabs will get stuck in new tissue. Wounds that should heal in three days will take a week, and are prone to leaving hypertrophic scars. In fact, there is nothing wrong with both of them, but they are suitable for different scenarios: wounds that are heavily contaminated and have a lot of exudate, such as a knee that is embedded in sand after falling in the mud, must be thoroughly debrided and allowed to dry until the exudate is almost gone before applying it, otherwise you will definitely get infected due to the dirt. ； If it is a small cut that has been treated cleanly and does not have much oozing, a superficial second-degree burn, or a wound after a mole has been stitched out, applying ointment can indeed save you a lot of suffering.

I now have three different ointments at home, all based on my own experience: the most commonly used one is the chitosan basic one that costs more than ten yuan. If I cut my hand while cutting vegetables or my nephew fell on his knee while running, I rinse it with saline and apply a layer of iodophor after disinfection. There is also a recombinant human epidermal growth factor ointment that needs to be kept in the refrigerator. It was prescribed by the hospital last time I applied the mole. After applying it for a week, there was not even a red mark left on the mole. If I blindly applied the mole myself a few years ago, the brown mark would disappear in two years. There is also a silicone ointment, which was prepared for my sister’s caesarean section last year. She insisted on applying it for eight months. Now the scar is only a thin white line, which is completely invisible when wearing navel-baring clothes.

Of course, not every situation can be improved. I fell while climbing a wild mountain, and my knee was embedded with a pile of gravel. I just flushed it and applied ointment, but pus leaked out the next day. When I went to the community hospital for debridement, the nurse scolded me for a long time, saying that applying ointment before the dirt was cleaned was equivalent to building a greenhouse for bacteria. It would be strange if there was no infection. Also, the last time my colleague wore new shoes, he scuffed his heel. After applying ointment, he put on an airtight cartoon Band-Aid. After covering it for a day, the wound immediately turned white and festered. It was supposed to be healed in two days, but he had to go to the hospital three times to change the dressing, and it took half a month to recover. What's even more outrageous is that the last time I saw someone getting a deep cut with a kitchen knife, he was bleeding and applying ointment on it. That was just a waste of time. The deep wound had to be stopped and sutured first, and the ointment was for aftercare, so it couldn't help the emergency at all.

To put it bluntly, this thing is just a nursing tool to help you avoid suffering. Don’t believe the merchant’s claim that it “can cure all diseases without leaving scars”, and don’t call it an IQ tax. If you are really not sure whether your wound can be used, go to the community hospital downstairs and ask a nurse to take a look. What you can do in two minutes is much more reliable than the folk remedies you watch on half-an-hour short videos.