Slough and Debridement

Hi everyone!

How many of us out there find that large amounts of slough in a wound bed can really make a great day at work bad. Or the wound that turns from 10% slough to 90% slough in a matter of days, when you almost had it healed out. Yep, this is the behavior of slough. It can be there at the start, come on in the middle of healing, or sneak up on you just before you are ready to heal the wound out.

All that we ever want is for slough to just go away and never come back. There are a few ways we as nurses can help debride slough. Aside from surgical debridement which an advanced practictioner can peel the slough off surgically. Nurses can assist the body to dissolve slough on its own with autolytic debridment and also applications of chemical pastes to help break down the slough.

I once had a diabetic BKA that took 2 years to heal stump wounds because that slough went from 100% down to 5% and then towards the end of healing back up to 80 to 85% slough. This was frustrating for both of us, although we enjoyed our visits. I finally was able to heal the wound by alternating Santyl ointment with silversorb every other day and it finally worked! We used hydroferra blue, xerofoam, you name it we tried it. But the alternating the chemical debrider with the antimicrobial really did the trick.

What are some good products you have used for debridment and please share some of your experiences with slough?

Tags: Debridement, Slough

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Permalink Reply by Toochukwu Edward Egungwu (IT) on January 2, 2012 at 2:40pm

Hi Kim,

I've been looking for a place to get information about woundcare. Anyways, down to the business. There's this leg ulcer on my ankle(sickle cell related). It's been off and on for seven years. I had one year without it but unfortunately it broke down and it's pretty bad now. Fortunately, I've been able to acquire two tubes of biafine(which I am totally new to). The wound has quite an amount of slough on the surface so each time I go to get it dressed, it is scrubbed with hydrogen peroxide and then rinsed with saline before the biafine is applied. So far, today is the second time I'm trying biafine. I was wondering if there was a way to share images of the current state of my ankle with you or any other person that could have some bit of advice for me in this forum. I'm limited to the variety of woundcare resources as I live in Lagos, Nigeria.

p.s

I got the biafine mailed to me by my brother and I can get always get more of it if the need arises.