How long does a wound vac stay on a skin graft?
A wound VAC is a special dressing that applies suction to your wound to improve its healing. The wound VAC system will be removed 5 to 7 days after your surgery. Then your surgeon will look at your graft to make sure it’s fully healed. If it isn’t fully healed, you may need to keep your wound VAC dressing on longer.
What type of wound is a wound vac used for?
Wound vacs are often used to treat acute or complex wounds, such as combat wounds or traumatic injuries, severe burns and skin grafts, amputations, full surgical and post-surgical (dehisced) wounds.
How do you treat a skin graft wound?
Dry the wound with surgical gauze or a clean wash cloth. For the first week, apply a light layer of bacitracin or neosporin to the skin graft. Cover with a light gauze. After one week, you no longer need to use the bacitracin or neosporin.
How does a wound vac promote healing?
A wound vacuum device removes this pressure over the area of the wound. This can help a wound heal in several ways. It can gently pull fluid from the wound over time. This can reduce swelling, and may help clean the wound and remove bacteria.
Do skin grafts turn black?
Your graft site may have areas that turn dark blue or black. This means that this part of the graft tissue has died. It is common for this to happen in small areas. Your healthcare provider will tell you how to care for this area if needed.
When should a wound vac be discontinued?
Length of Wound Vac Treatment For those who are wondering how long a wound vac needs to stay on, most healthcare professionals recommend changing the dressing every 48 to 72 hours or at least three times a week. If the wound is infected, it may require the dressing to be changed more often.
When should a wound vac be removed?
For a non-infected wound: KCI recommends the V.A.C. ® Dressings be changed every 48 to 72 hours, but no less than 3 times per week. For infected wounds: These wounds must be monitored often and very closely. Infected wounds dressing changes may need to be changed more often than 48 to 72 hours.
How do you treat a failed skin graft?
Partial graft loss can be treated with wet or moist saline-soaked gauze or other local dressings. If salvaging the graft is successful to any extent, the defect can be allowed to heal secondarily (filling in). Re-grafting must take into consideration the reasons the first graft failed.