Drains & Sutures Flashcards
What is Primary Intention?
edges of a clean surgical incision are held together for healing purposes
What is Secondary Intention?
Wounds are left open and allowed to heal by natural scar formation. Granulation tissue gradually fills in the area of the defect with scar tissue. Ex: Pressure Ulcer
What are Wound Drains and why are they used?
A type of wound evacuation system. Used because if we let the drainage permeate the skin around the wound, it increases the risk for infection, and it can cause pressure onto already compromised tissue.
What is the difference between Active and Passive wound drains?
Active: have some sort of mechanism to maintain negative pressure i.e.. wall suction or squeezing bulb of JP
Passive: drains through gravity
What is an example of an Open Drain?
Penrose Drain
How often do drain dressings need to be changed?
Normal dressings are changed as per Dr. Orders, but any dressings around a drain MUST be changed every day to avoid maceration of skin from leakage from the drain.
How can I obtain a wound culture from a drain?
- Gather material (sterile cup, name/date sticker)
- **NEVER collect specimen from old drainage
- Swab new drainage or obtain sample–may need to apply pressure to express fluid
- Label tube, put in bio-hazard bag, complete requisition
- Chart
If you are changing a dressing where there is an inscision and a drain side by side, which would you change first?
Always work clean to dirty, so clean the inscision first and cover it up, and then clean the drain dressing and cover it up with a new dressing.
For surgical inscisions, are you more likely to see sutures or staples?
Staples
What is the rationale behind cleaning the incision prior to removing the sutures or staples?
N/S helps to loosen the sutures and get rid of the dry drainage that has gathered there over time, and we want the skin to be as clean as possible before we expose more skin.
When emptying or removing a JP drain, is it a “clean” procedure or a “sterile” procedure?
Clean procedure
