It’s the beginning of summertime and along with the fun in the sun, comes the prime environment for accidents and injuries to happen. There are a record number of wound-related injuries reported at this time of the year. That’s why it’s important to know the difference between wounds and the importance of wound care.
While looking at the different types of wounds and how to properly care for them, know it’s important to receive proper wound care to prevent infections. Also, being able to recognize the signs or symptoms of a wound not being taken care of properly.
Wound Care Defined
When looking at wound care itself, there are a few different things to think about. Including, but not limited to, the area of injury, the expected recovery period, as well as the best wound care plan in order to keep it from growing worse.
That’s a place where compounding medications for treatment can really come in handy, but more on that later.
Say a wound is diagnosed properly and that all other factors have been accounted for, this is the perfect place to figure out your best treatment options.
While trying to heal, wound care is so important. Though getting the proper wound care from a trusted source is just as important.
This is because infection and other complications can appear if the wound isn’t properly cared for. Proper care also means a faster healing process and less scarring.
Why Wound Care is Important
If you want your wound to heal properly, it all starts with proper wound care. Having an open wound means the risk of infection. Which can also result in major scarring, amputation, or sometimes even death, if it’s not properly taken care of.
It doesn’t really matter the source, whether the wound occurred from recent surgery, traumatic injury, pressure, tissue donation, burns, or another chronic illness, you’ll need the right medication therapy to ensure you have the best healing process possible.
The end goal of proper wound care is to make sure blood flow is properly reaching the wound site. It’s also to manage any pain and prevent any possible infections.
This can be achieved by gentle, but thorough cleaning. Followed by some sort of topical medication and then a sterile dressing. This helps to keep the wound clean and allows it to heal quicker, all while reducing the chances of any complications or side effects.
Preventing a Disease
To prevent a disease contracted from an open wound, you need to monitor the wound’s dressings and bandages constantly. This reduces any risk of infection or other problems by a large amount.
If seeing a healthcare professional for wound care, there are many important decisions they can make on your behalf. Such as changing the dressings and noting how well the wound is healing. They may also look at things like temperature, bleeding, and smell to find out what is going on.
Generally, a good rule of thumb to follow is that wounds should be cleaned once a day with some sort of disinfectant made for wound care, followed by new, clean dressings applied to the wound.
Speeds up Healing
There’s a dangerous myth that wounds will heal faster if they’re left open and uncovered, which is definitely not true. When you have an open wound, it is actually going to heal faster if it’s covered properly.
Also, having that proper bandaging over the wound helps to further prevent infection or irritation.
Scarring is Lessened
In order to stop scars from forming, you should keep a wound soft while it’s in the process of healing. This is so to keep the new skin from becoming hard.
Using an antibiotic ointment, or other treatment options recommended by a healthcare professional can help this skin stay soft while healing.
Compounded Medications for Wound Care
If you have an open wound, you should have it evaluated and a customized treatment plan could be made in order to promote proper healing. Just using over-the-counter wound care products can cause harsh irritations to your wound.
Compounding medications is a way to customize your needs individually and help to reduce any damage from the wrong applications according to each wound’s needs.
If you compound your medications for wound care, it is a way to combine the sometimes multiple medications needed into one topical therapy for your wound. For example, one compounded ointment can potentially hold antibiotic, antiseptic, and tissue growth stimulators. This helps compliance of treatment more achievable and the products really user-friendly.
Anesthetics and antifungal agents can also be added to compounded topical preparations.
Compounded Creams for Wound Care
Using a compounded ointment, cream, or gel is a different way to achieve the wound healing benefits. Gels can help reduce moisture and create drying. They also create a nice protective barrier, which helps healthy tissue growth and creates an easier way to irrigate the wound. Which eliminates any sort of damaging scrubbing to the area.
Ointments and creams stick well to a wound, which helps lock in that moisture. This helps to reduce heavy scarring, as well as promote quick healing.
Topical bandages are also created to stay in place for a longer amount of time and help keep the moisture balance where it needs to be in your wound.
Reasons to Treat Wound with Compounding
Below we’ll go over the main reasons why compounding medications work so well when it comes to your wound healing:
Treats Multiple Wound Types
Anywhere from car crashes, to bug bites, to surgeries, wounds can be left behind in all different shapes and sizes.
Compounding medication is designed to treat multiple wound types. Whether it be a compounded cream, powder, or gel. As no two wounds are identical as far as healing and developing scar tissue goes.
Pharmacists who compound medications design personalized therapy that covers each unique wound care challenge. Working along with other therapy types, they help promote ideal wound care and healing.
Instead of having different medications for pain relief, blood flow increase, and infection control, you will have an option for all of those treatments in one. Allowing you to treat all of the wound care problems surrounding your specific wound.
Minimize the Bacterial Load
When it comes to an open wound, infection is one of the main concerns during treatment. Not taking the required measures, a hefty bacterial load could slow down the healing process and further damage the skin cells. In some more extreme cases, germs invade the wound and lead to tissue loss beyond the original wound itself. Bacteria could also create granulation of tissue surrounding the site of the wound. Which could eventually lead to a very intense scare.
When looking at wound research, the most common bacteria that occurs in wounds is staphylococcus aures, otherwise known as a staph infection.
Before, oral antibiotics were used as a prescription to treat wound infections. However, that came with a risk of resistance to antibiotics in the future. Which could also prevent a wound from healing properly.
Having a customized topical ointment for your wound can help release antibiotics directly to the site of germs. Which makes it much more effective and healing is promoted at a much faster rate.
Resolve Pain without Risking Addiction
It’s not unknown that pain killers can lead to serious addiction problems in some patients. Which in turn could lead to an accidental overdose in some cases. It has become truly an overdose epidemic and a lot of doctors are becoming wearier of prescribing opioids and other harsh prescription pain medications.
Using a topical for pain relief helps cut out the chance of addiction and offers a safer way to achieve pain management, along with quick relief time.
Common drugs used in topical compounded pain relief include:
- Lidocaine
- Clonidine
- Capsaicin
- Dextromethorphan
- Ketamine
- Ibuprofen
- Naproxen
Each of the drugs listed above can target different receptors located at the wound site. Physicians, as well as compounding pharmacists, are able to adjust the amount of pain medication found in the topical. This helps achieve complete relief in each individual patient.
Compounding Addresses Your Unique Concerns
When looking at some patients, their wounds will heal at a slower rate than others. This is because they may have underlying conditions such as diabetes, or heart disease. Also, conventional medications can be deemed ineffective for these same patients.
Compounding medication and unique wound coverings helps stimulate that tissue growth and shorten healing time. Also, those who struggle with allergies are sometimes not able to use any commercial creams that are meant to aid in pain relief.
A compounding pharmacist can help to eliminate any allergy-causing ingredients from an ointment and make the perfect customized treatment plan for each patient. This can include custom-wound care medications, which means medicine specifically made to help care for your wound.
Conclusion
Utah Family Pharmacy provides compounding at some of our locations. We specialize in serving our communities with friendly, fast, and extremely professional services.
Our staff is well trained and willing to help with any wound care management questions, or concerns. If you’re concerned about a current wound healing properly and want to learn more, contact us today!
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