I have to disagree with the folks saying to leave wounds open to the air (other than minor abrasions etc.)--I was always taught in nursing/NP school that wounds heal best when they are kept moist and covered. This also keeps crud out of the wound once you've cleaned it up. As far as disinfecting or not, I think that depends on the situation and resources available. If you have clean water, irrigating with that (and scrubbing if you have to, to get dirt out) should be fine; if you have soap that's even better. Antiseptics are hard on healthy cells, but if the water you have is not clean then using them is probably the lesser of the two evils. For example, I was on a medical mission trip to Kenya and one of the patients we saw was a woman who'd had surgery on her leg at the country's major hospital...the dressing had not been changed since she got home a week prior to our seeing her! We had to soak the dressing off as it was stuck to the wound...given that the tap water was questionable we used a bottle of antiseptic solution that we had in the clinic. Under normal circumstances here in the US, I would not hesitate to use plain tap water for something like if I didn't have sterile water or saline available, but there we didn't dare.
_________________________
The rhythm is gonna get you...and if it's v-tach or v-fib, the results will be shocking!