The most effective non-stick dressing for er use is petrolatum gauze: a 4X4 coated with vaseline. Bacitracin antibiotic ointment is mostly vaseline, and works well. The downsides: air doesn'tpenetrate vaseline, so the underlying skin becomes...well...prune-like. When you change the dressing, you gotta clean off all the old ointment and put on new, cuz old ointment stops doing its antibiotic thing and you create a warm, moist dark haven for bacteria. Cleaning the wound is the most important part, drinking water works fine. ER docs no longer clean wounds with peroxide, alcohol, tincture of iodine-these kill bacteria just fine, but also kill the healthy skin cells at the margin of the wound. I the wound is really contaminated, some of the docs use a betadine/povidone iodine and tap water mix for irrigating it.

My wound care doc has a spray of some sort that really really losens your bandage before you remove it. Of course, I can't remember it's name, but man I wish I had some right now. My dressings have needed a change since I got home, and I've been chickening out since then. I hate hate hate changing my dressings. It HURTS

Oh - 3 things
first
Ah - so you have learned why bike racers shave their legs - so that the hairs don't get stuck in the wounds, or pulled off by the tape. Makes it way easier to clean the wounds...


second
Hydrogen Peroxide is now considered contraindicated - it tends to kill good cells at the wound bed. Better to use saline or just water

third- if you want real "No stick" there is a bandage called "aqua-cell" - it's made of a colligen material, and is usually used for burns/chronic wounds. It doesn't stick because the bandage actually disolves into the wound - what sticks, you leave. Of course at $60 or so for a 4x4...

Over the last 10 months or so, I've learn more about wound care, and in particular chronic wound care than I'd ever wanted to know. What seems to hurt, what doesn't (hint - what hurts this week might be fine next week, and the reverse is true too). I've learned that deeply infected wounds hurt. I've learned that the antibiotics they give you when you have MRSA are NOT fun, but at least for ME - worked a joy

I'll have to do some research. However, I also have not been riding my bike so I can get road rash. For a long time, I've bene the guy who uses the iodine, peroxide, etc. When I was playing football, I'd slather methiolate on my hands each weekend after a game, of course, then i find out the methiolate was not good for me.

As the Dr. to get you some of the spray or at least what it is. If you know what it is, you can find it.

I can offer some experience in this field. Just before my senior year in high school (i.e., summer of 1996), I had a pretty harsh spill after doing a jump on my BMX bike. Unfortunately for me, a street light was a little too close to the aerial trajectory of this jump and I hit the right side of my handlebars on the street light before I landed. Lets just say that my front wheel wasn’t exactly straight forward when I came back down to the ground.

Let me also add that I was traveling fast enough that I was at the following street light by the time I stopped sliding down the street/gutter.

After my mother saw my road rash, crapped a brick sideways, and drove me to the hospital, the doctor gave us some wonderful stuff called Silvadene (silver sulfadiazine). The basic use was to apply this white, goopy Silvadene to the road rash whenever the gauze bandages were changed. It served as a good topical antibiotic and kept the bandages from sticking to the wound pretty darn well.

I still have scars on my elbows, forearms, and wrists from that happy little incident.

Silvadene is fairly good, and works. (BTDT). The Aquacel I mentioned is also available as silvercel, which is what is on my leg as we speak

I found out the name of the spray my MD uses to release the bandages when they are stuck

Allclenz

And yeah, he sent a bottle home with me - helped with the wound change this AM - there was still some sticking at one point, but it did unstick 90% of the wound. If I had more time, I'd bet it would have done 100%

Good deal. At least there's improvement in that area.