Recommendation for suture line on ear... - Page 1

Looking for suggestions to avoid hardening of scar line and ear cartiledge on my gsd female..Injury is pretty fresh and involving a repair of a bite wound (about 1/3 of ear pinna) removed in skirmish with another female.  The section was not repaired particularly well by the emergency vet, however my vet and I have decided to let it heal to determine how much if any residual necrotic areas there might be before reassessing.  She suggested petroleum jelly, however I have found that to be drying in the long run.  Any thoughts on Vitamin E or other products (once the wound is somewhat healed)...It's been about 5 days, the wound did involve need to cut down cartiledge to allow closure.  Thanks in advance for any suggestions

Manuka Honey

Pawpaw ointment


Petroleum Jelly ????????

How about bag balm?

I worked for a vet, when we cropped ears we too recommended petroleum jelly applied to the suture line. It keeps the scabs soft and makes it easier to remove the sutures. Jelly should not have a drying effect .

In my nursing, when I have a suture line or a burn where we don't want the skin to get hard and dry, we use polysporin. It's vaseline based, and NO, vaseline, aka petroleum jelly, does NOT cause the skin to dry!

It's actually a petroleum by-product. When workers were drilling for oil, the drills would get covered with it. The workers found that their skin never got dry and cracked when they handled the pipes that were coated with it. Their hands were always smooth and baby soft. A chemist named Chesebrough (later the founder of Cheesbourough-Ponds cosmetic company) got the idea of refining it, and selling it as a skin remedy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_jelly 

sugar (what you use in the kitchen) repairs / regenerates the tissues and do not forms   the typical  scar tissue.

I am looking for this on google but most of infortmation are in spanish, anyway I wrote sugar healing wounds, and there aresome articles. Good luck!

Back in the Dark Ages of nursing, nurses used to put powdered sugar on wounds. We now know it did absolutely nothing to help healing.

Hi Sunsinlver. I have used sugar to treat wounds many times, Since I am a rescuer, many of pets had problems and in comparison to other products,  sugar  gave me  better results. In fact I  recently had an operated dog . One I brought from a shelter, she is very old.  The vet took away an eye, and the same vet recommended to put sugar on the wound, because of  the  difficulty of the healing. Regards
Hi Barkroz, it is just my humble experience, may be it could be usefull for your pet, but wait for more options, good luck!

I was a visiting nurse for many years. The first thing I did when I started the job was begin to learn advanced wound care skills. We were constantly attending inservices and seminars to learn about all the latest products and scientific advances. I did wound care every day, from simple postop incisions to cancerous tumours where the person's body was literally rotting away, and the smell was enough to make you gag. We used colloidal silver, iodine, Hygeol (a dilute solution of household bleach) and even vinegar (great for wounds infected with Pseudomonas.) Sugar, however, was not one of the things we used. I never did find out why doctors stopped using it, but there must have been a reason. [shrug]

One thing I DID find out when doing that job was that doctors (especially older doctors) are very reluctant to give up their favourite treatments. Recent research has shown Hygeol and iodine are toxic to new tissue growth, and actually slow wound healing, but many doctors STILL insist on using them, even though there are newer, better alternatives. Maybe that's the way it is with sugar, too. Well, at leats it's cheap, and doesn't require a doctor's prescription!

I did a quick online search re. the use of sugar on wounds. I did find some scientific journal articles from the British medical journal, The Lancet, re. its use, but most were more than 20 years old.  Unless I find a more recent article, I'm going to remain skeptical.