Wound care – Hello Doctor

What to do to prevent the worst kind of scars

September 1st, 2017 by The Hello Doctor Team

If you were a normal kid, you probably have scars and scrapes from your times running around outside with your friends; falling off trees, slipping off skateboards. Think of these as friendly childhood stripes, marks of your adventures! Scars in fact, are a necessary formation of the process your skin goes through to heal after an injury.

How scars are formed

Scars form from injuries, accidents, surgical procedures or skin conditions. The appearance of a scar depends on the type of the wound, where on your body you were injured, and other genetic factors. Scarring is an important part of healing.

The toughest kind of scar

Then there’s a keloid scar. These are the toughies. With keloids, the skin goes into an overdrive situation and “heals too much”. This forms an overgrowth of scar tissue over the wound: a hard, smooth and raised lump. This lump is often bigger than the wound itself. The scar is not harmful to your health, but it is quite visible.

The rubbery scar may become itchy, tender, and painful or create a burning sensation. It can develop anywhere on the body but most commonly on the earlobes, chest, shoulders and cheeks. They rarely develop on the face, except the jawline. They can also develop with minor injuries and body piercings.

What puts you at risk for Keloids?

Being under the age of 30.
Having someone with keloids in your family.
Being pregnant.
Having dark pigmentation.
Being of African, Latino or Asian descent.

Time to see a doctor?

Keloids are benign, meaning they’re not harmful; you don’t necessarily need to check in with your doctor. If you develop other symptoms though, and there’s an increase in overgrowth, it’s time to visit your doctor!

How to prevent it from forming:

Avoid shaving. Use hair removal creams instead.
Avoid body piercings and tattoos.
If you have acne, don’t pop your pimples!
Fresh wounds should be covered and kept moist. If you allow a fresh cut to breathe, you’re slowing down the healing process.
Stay away from the sun as it can be harmful to scar tissue and the production of collagen.
Avoid cosmetic surgery.
Eat a nutrient-rich diet that will help with healing from within.
Drink plenty of fluids to flush out toxins and help build new tissue.

Other kinds of scars

Stretchmarks are long narrow lines or stripes that form on the surface of the skin as result of stretching of the skin. They’re very common in both men and women.
Scar contractures are commonly caused by burns. The scar develops when the skin “shrinks”, resulting in tightness and restriction of movement.
Pitted or sunken scars (atrophic or “ice-pick” scars) are indentions; related to collagen and muscle loss. Acne and chicken pox are also related causes. The scars are hard to treat as they appear from the abnormal collagen production.
Hypertrophic scars are caused by injury to the deep layer of the skin tissues. The elevated appearance of the scar is caused by excess amounts of collagen produced by the body to repair the injury on the skin.

References

Are maggots the future of medicine?

August 2nd, 2017 by The Hello Doctor Team

They may be creepy, crawly and slimy, but maggots are cleaning wounds better than your surgeon, a study from France suggests.

In the study, men who had wounds that wouldn’t heal, were randomly assigned to have dead and unhealthy tissue removed from their wounds by standard surgical therapy, or maggot therapy. For the maggot therapy, live maggots were placed into their open flesh to eat away the dead tissue.

After a week, researchers discovered that the men who received the maggot therapy had less dead tissue in their wounds than the men who had conventional surgery done by a doctor.

After two weeks, though, there were no differences between the groups. Both had the same amount of dead tissue in their wounds, and the maggots did not help wounds heal any faster.

You may be asking: “But why was this creepy study done in the first place?!”

Maggot medicine

Maggot therapy isn’t anything new. Medical use of maggots was approved in 2004 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. When placed on a wound, maggots begin to eat dead tissue. While they do this, they secrete an enzyme that dissolves rotten tissue and fights infection. What makes them even more effective, is that they leave behind healthy tissue, which helps to reduce the risk of infection.

According to new research in Clinical Infectious Diseases, maggots were found useful in treating deep wounds without increasing the risk of further infections. “Maggot debridement (removal of foreign of dead tissue) takes out all the dead and infected tissue, which is necessary for the wound to close,” says lead author of the study, Anne Dompmartin-Blanchère. Surgical debridement on the other hand, is often lengthy and painful, something that maggot therapy eliminates, she explains.

Is it safe?

Maggot therapy was a breakthrough in the medical field, but there are a few challenges to the treatment.

First, there’s the ick factor! So patients need to be psychologically strong to go thought with it.

There’s also some pain involved. Doctors also worry that disinfected larvae may cause or worsen a preexisting infection in a wound.

Although the effects of maggot therapy weren’t significant in the most recent study, it may be useful in some patients with diabetes, whose wounds need rapid control, or in those who can’t undergo surgery or receive anaesthesia. A review of all the studies on Maggot Debridement Therapy (MDT) in 2014, showed that conducted in 2014, improves the healing rate of chronic ulcers.

Who would’ve thought that little creepy crawlies could be the future of medicine? Would you be able to go through with the treatment?

References:

Wound healing: Take care before it festers!

March 31st, 2016 by The Hello Doctor Team

If you’ve had an operation or an injury that’s left you with a stitched wound, then this basic step-by-step wound-care information is just what you need!

Continue reading “Wound healing: Take care before it festers!”

Luis Suarez – Why are human bites dangerous?

June 25th, 2014 by The Hello Doctor Team

It took less than 5 minutes from the moment the scuffle happened in the Uruguay vs Italy game, to the first jokes hitting social media across the world. Here are some of the memes that appeared.

Sure, it is funny, in a ridiculous way: a supremely talented guy in one of the fastest-moving games in the world has time to bite the man blocking him? Worst of all, this is the third time it’s happened, and Luis Suarez, playing for Uruguay, is known as a biter. But if you think about how dangerous human bites are, why is anyone keeping a serial-biter on the team?
Continue reading “Luis Suarez – Why are human bites dangerous?”