Wound Care without the Presence of a Drain
After weight loss surgery, it’s important to keep your wounds (or points of incision) clean. Without keeping them clean and monitoring the fluid that occasionally comes out, you run the risk of reopening your wound, contracting an infection, and seriously impacting your overall health.
General Incision-Care Tips
Dr. Stewart will use dissolvable sutures to close incisions. The incisions will be covered with steri-strips and a gauze dressing.
- Keep your incision area dry. This can be challenging when you have some fluids draining out of the area. Drainage is perfectly natural and is something you should expect to encounter. This means that you need to monitor your incision site several times a day and change your dressings if they become wet.
- Change the dressing if the incision is draining. Remove the gauze dressing the day after surgery. If there is no drainage, you need not replace the dressing. If there is drainage from the incision, change the dressing daily or when it becomes saturated.
- Apply Antibiotic ointment. Begin applying antibiotic ointment when the incision is dry and you are no longer covering it with the gauze dressing.
- Watch for signs of infection or irritation. When you change your incision dressings, be sure to take a look at the area and monitor it for signs of infection or irritation. If you have odd-colored puss or bloating of the skin around the incision, it may not be healing normally and could be infected.
- When you shower. You can clean your incision with soapy water and a wet cloth before or after your shower. It is not necessary to cover the incision site while in the shower. After you’ve cleaned the incision, apply your topical antibiotic.
- If your drainage never seems to stop, call your doctor. Eventually, your incision point should stop draining fluid. If this doesn’t happen after a couple of weeks, a call to your doctor is in order.
- Remove your Steri-Strips after one week. When a significant amount of the steri-strip is peeling away, you may remove the steri-strip completely. If they are still intact after one week, gently remove them.
Wound Care with a Drain
Some weight loss surgery patients are given a drain to assist with post-surgery wound drainage. Drains are made from soft tubes that help to suction fluids out of your wound and into a bulb made for fluid collection. If you were given a drain during surgery, you’ll need to do some special maintenance.
- Keep the site of the drain clean. Use soap, water, and a clean cloth twice daily to clean the area. Afterward, apply your antibiotic ointment.
- Twice a day, empty the fluid from the bulb at the end of the tube. If the bulb becomes filled prior to your normal emptying time, you should make a special trip to empty it.
- Monitor the health of your drainage. The fluid that drains from your wound should be pink or red right after surgery and then should become clear after a few weeks. If you have fluid in any other color, or if the color of the fluid looks like the color of food you just ate, be sure to call your doctor. It’s normal to collect fat particles in the tube; however, they can clog the tube. A simple pinch over the fat globule while running the tube through your fingers should help.
- When you shower, do not worry about covering the drain site or the tube. If you have some drainage happening around the tube, then you should cover the area with gauze.
- Visit your bariatric surgeon seven to ten days after your surgery so he or she can check your drain and determine whether or not you still need it.
- If you have any problems with the drain or drain site, or if you see any signs of infection or malfunction, contact your doctor immediately.