Wound Management

Introduction

The aim of wound management is to restore the animal’s function as efficiently and esthetically as possible without complications or compromising the patient’s long term physiological needs. The healing rate and surgery success may be negatively influenced by local factors such as infection, poor nutrition and lack of local blood flow, but also positively by preparing an optimal environment for healing processes to occur.

Some initial studies on the wounds management related to war wounds include methods that seem brutal retrospectively, but many of the basic principles keep being the same: stop the blood loss and wound bleeding (hemostasis) and eliminating foreign bodies and dead tissue (debridement), which obstruct the healing process and provide material on which infection may become established.

The economical value of horses is important, and no doubt it has given rise to an effort because it worths trying to prevent complications, keeping the function and ensuring rapid restoration of activity. Wounds management has kept true to these principles until nowadays.

Objectives of wound management:

• Functional and esthetic repair

• Pain and distress relieve for the animal

• Efficient procecedure from the economical and time perspective

• Quick decisions making in case of healing delay signs

Common wounds in small animals’ practice

1. Abrasion and shearing lesions: damage due to friction commonly observed in traffic accidents.

2. Degloving: physiological damages due to loss of vascular supplying or physical loss due to traumatic removing of skin.

3. Sharp wounds: penetration into skin as seen in dogs or cat bites, or lesions caused by sticks.  […]