After the race, medical cleaned up the wounds a bit and sent me on my way. I went through this about a month ago after taking a spill towards the end of the bike at IMTX.
Good luck to your friend road rash sucks but with proper care the downtime can be minimal. And they avoid some of the potential issues with the silver-based dressings. Honey-based dressings (MediHoney): effective on stubborn & slow healing wounds. Alginates (Mepisorb, Aquacel): capable of absorbing a large amount of exudate for heavily draining stuff. Foam (Allevyn, Mepitel): maintains a more balanced moisture level, can absorb moderate exudate, and encourages even granulation. You never want to trap exudate over a potentially or definitively infected wound. Hydrocolloids (DuoDerm): protective and encourage autolytic debridement, but like film, they are occlusive and do not drain.
Film (TegaDerm): good for more superficial stuff, but not for heavily draining wounds. The silver variants are good for dealing with infected or infection-prone areas, but use only when necessary as they can cause localized argyria. Most of these dressings also have an "Ag" option, involving some form of silver suspension (often sulfadiazine). Used properly, they can seriously accelerate healing time, decrease pain, and minimize scarring. There are a lot of advanced wound care options out there now, some already mentioned. Once closed, film dressings are great for covering areas prone to irritation from pool water.
It's been almost a year since my crash, and the only way you can tell I was injured is that the crash took the freckles right off my body, so I now have patches of "clear" skin surrounded by a sea of freckles! I kid you not, I was magically healed in just six days! And yes, you will need to use sunscreen once healed, as the new skin is much more susecptible to burning. This helps to get clean margins for the skin to grow back.Ĥ) Reapply new bandages for another 2-3 days. Then just use your hand to carefully slough off the dead skin. Yeah, I know, I gave the wound care nurse a crazy look too! Here's how you do it: get in a warm bathtub and let the water soak the bandages off. They also make a "tube" of fish-net bandage (it stretches for various diameters) that you can use over arms/legs.ģ) Take bandages off, and debride the wound. Place over wounds for 2-3 days (you can use Neosporin if you want, but it is not necessary). The hospital where I work has a Wound Care Center, so I went to the experts:ġ) If skin is gone, it needs to be covered in order to heal - do not leave open to air! The skin grows back from the outside edges of the wound towards the center.Ģ) Get silver-infused 4x4 gauze bandages.
Crashed on Mt Lemmon last year going 30 mph - according to my Garmin, slid 100 feet on the pavement.