Small Animal Surgery 4th Edition

 

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Wound management and its practices in cats and dogs and other animals

 Hi, this is Dr Zahid Afzal from General veterinary hospital Lahore .Today I want to discuss about the wound management and its treatment and the correct technique to deal with this type of cases. On this article, I already uploaded my video on my YouTube channel General veterinary hospital; you can see the video by clicking here. So first of all, I would like to tell you that how many types of wounds are present and how we can differentiate them according to their nature.

 So number one is simple wound, simple wounds are those wounds which are just trauma, just are rupture of skin and which are not complex or complicated by any type of other wound or injury. So simple type of wound can be treated very well and easily, by using above mentioned techs.

Second type of wounds are complex wounds, so the complex wound are those ones which are multiple of simple wounds, so they need some special and specified treatment.

 And the third type of wounds is infectious wounds i.e. there are some discharges of blood, pus and a very bad smell coming out of the wound. So now the question is, that how we will treat these wounds and how we can be able to manage these wounds that owner of the animal and the vet, both get satisfied. So these are the simple things most of you knew about this, but I will explain some new techniques by which you can easily heal up the wound and its types.

So let's start from the treatment of simple one for the simple wound you need nothing to worry about it just wash the wound with normal saline and remove the bloodshed from it and apply some iodine on that wound, after that if the wound is deeper than you can use cream mycitracin, and if the wound is somehow simple that is on the skin then you can use cream Provate G.  

Then come to the next option of the wound, which is complex wound and complicated wound. So in this case you firstly need to know that either the wound is fresh or either the wound is mature or chronic. So if any case it's complex then you can simply wash the wound with iodine and then apply the cream mycitracin on it and that site if the point is suitable then you can use the bandage also on it. But if you cannot use the bandage then keep the wound open so that external oxygen can maintain the cellular level and its productivity and regeneration power. If the wound is mature and chronic then you have to use the debridement procedure. Now I would like to explain that what is the debridement procedure, the debridement procedure is freshening of the wound and removing of the old and dead blood cells. If you remove the old and dead cells then the new cells came out of the skin, will automatically start reproducing the other cells and by this the wound will heal up within few days instead of taking long time. If the wound is complicated, you need to do the freshening of wound by any type of forceps or any manual method, after this wash the wound with normal saline and wash it with iodine solution and Oxyferin solution, after applying the few drops of this lotion you can put the cream mycitracin on that wound. This is an important thing which we have to remember, that we must have to use any type of antibiotic which is preferably antibiotic Augmentin or amoxicillin, which will prevent any type of infection and which will be stop the proliferation of any bacterial infection.

So now let's come to the last type of the wound, which is infectious type of wound. In the infectious type of wounds, firstly you have to clean the wound with manual procedures like washing with normal saline and by using the forceps. When you have removed all the dead cells and the discharges from that wound, then after that you will wash the wound with normal saline then filled in cream mycitracin, then you can also apply that lotion oxyferin. Don't ever use the bandage on the infectious wound, because it can damage or degenerate the surrounding skin of that wound. So the basic thing is that we have to clear up our mind that we are dealing with very normal condition but if we don't take care of this then this could be more severe and more acute, you can also use injection gentamicin as a parental antibiotic and inject in the muscles to boost up the antibiotic effect in the infectious wound. This will recover the animals in 3 days instead of 5 or 7 days. The wound healing power will be more efficient when you are using the double antibiotic.

Now the most important thing is that you must have some specified diet plan of that animal which is most preferably the beef mince meat which help to recover the wound, with more faster procedure. So if you are using any type of dry food you can stop it for some time and you can use the beef mince meat for few days. If its summer season then I will recommend you that avoid using the beef mince meat and if its winter season then you can use it, whatever the quantity your dog is taking. Here one of the most important questions which arise in our mind that what if maggots got infected the wound…? Then don’t need to worry about that, I already wrote up an article on this topic also fewdays back you can read it by clicking here. As maggot wounds are somehow different from normal trauma and other wounds so it required a different type of treatment. I hope this article will help you in boosting up your skill in veterinary field practices. Always remember me in your prayers and don’t forget to use appetite 100 syrup, in your field practice, it’s very natural product produced by me. I will be waiting for your precious comments and feedback. Stay blessed..!