7 Best Known Ways to Treat Open Wounds

• • What should you do when you come into contact with an open wound?
  • What procedures should you follow to treat open wounds?
  • Why would you need to ensure that the victim of the open wound has minimal scarring?

Accidents happen, we all know that and while you can not rubber-pad the entire world, it is beneficial for everyone to know some of the best ways to treat open wounds. The following ways will help you treat an open wound when accidents happen.

1. Applying Pressure

One of the very first things that you should do when you are doing an open wound treatment is applying pressure. As you may know, pressure is one thing that will help the wound stop bleeding.

2. Cleaning the Wound from Infection

After the bleeding has stopped, you definitely want to make sure that the wound does not get infected. Open wound care is extremely important, especially if the accident just happened and the wound is getting worse. Cleaning the open wound out is one great way to treat open wounds, a simple cotton ball and some peroxide can work wonders.

3. Washing the Wound with Cool Water

Depending on how bad the wound is, another open wound treatment can be running the wound under cool and flowing water, this will not only shock the wound into stopping bleeding but it will also clean it out. This open wound care treatment is only good for minor cuts and scrapes, do not use if the wound is deep as you can prolong the bleeding instead of stopping it.

4. Washing Wound with Antibacterial Soap

While cleaning the wound is an important step, if you do not have any peroxide around anywhere, you can also use anti-bacterial soap. Warm water is going to be best for the wound when you are cleaning it as well.

5. Get the Wound Stitched

There is another type of wound that requires a different way to treat open wounds. This type of wound is the type that gaps open and has jagged edges. For these types of open wounds you will definitely want to consult a doctor and see if you need stitches. Stitches are sometimes necessary, especially with open wounds.

6. Dress the Wound

After you have gone through all of the steps to assess the wound and go through all of the open wound treatments, you definitely want to make sure that you dress the wound. Exposing an open wound to oxygen for too long will only cause infection and no one wants that!

7. Frequently Re-Bandage the Wound

Finally, after you have gone through everything from the beginning, you want to make sure that you are changing the dressings on the open wound every six hours if it is a really bad wound or twice a day if the wound is pretty normal. Making sure that the bandages are changed is a very important part of treating open wounds as you want to make sure that the wound does not get an infection because of bad bandages.

The information supplied in this article is not to be considered as medical advice and is for educational purposes only.