Press Room

  In our daily life, there are always some small accidents that cause trauma to the skin. The wounds caused by these small accidents are usually not large or serious. Most people choose to deal with them by themselves instead of going to the hospital.

  The common wound treatment methods in life are divided into dry healing and wet healing. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages, and also affect the subsequent scar formation.

What is dry healing?

  Let the wound be exposed to the air and keep it dry, or use traditional gauze to bandage it, and wait for the wound to scab and fall off naturally. This recovery process is dry healing. “The wound must be breathable” and “The wound should not touch water” also correspond to dry healing.

  For a long time in medical history, dry healing has occupied a mainstream position. It is not only common sense in the lives of ordinary people, but also a way for many medical staff to treat wounds.

  But as time went on, people found that this treatment was not without its shortcomings. For example, gauze easily adhered to the wound, which increased pain when changing the dressing; it was very itchy when the scab formed, and people often couldn’t control their hands from picking at the scab; for deeper wounds, there might be subscab infection, etc.
  Therefore, there was a new way to treat wounds, wet healing.

What is moist healing?

  At present, many studies have shown that moist healing is faster than dry healing, partly because epidermal cells are easier to migrate in the moist environment created by dressings, and wound exposure to its own exudate may also promote wound healing.

  Moreover, the scars of wounds with moist healing are less obvious than those with dry healing. Moist healing can reduce inflammation and hyperplasia, thereby reducing scars.

  In a randomized controlled trial that compared four treatment options (ointment + dressing, ointment + gauze, dressing only, gauze only) in an abrasive wound model, one set of photographs clearly showed that the scars of the gauze group (dry healing) were the most obvious.

The first three types are moist healing, and none of them form scabs. The scars in the ointment + dressing group are the least obvious, and the scars in the dressing group are slightly worse, but also better than those in the gauze group.
  Supported by various studies, moist healing is increasingly used (such as postoperative care for fractional laser). However, not all wounds are treated with moist healing. It is up to the medical staff to analyze the specific wounds.

How to do moist healing?

  The steps of moist healing can be roughly divided into three steps: rinse with saline → apply ointment and/or dressing → change dressing as appropriate. As for a series of questions such as when to apply ointment, what ointment to apply, how much ointment to apply, which dressing to choose, when to change the dressing, whether to rinse with saline when changing the dressing, whether to reapply ointment after changing the dressing, which situation indicates that the wound is healing soon, what to do if there is exudate in the wound, etc., it is recommended to follow the doctor’s advice.