High pressure irrigation of wounds is critical in reducing the rate of wound infection. There are a variety of commercial irrigation kits which include splash guards. If you are irrigating correctly and generating at least 8 PSI of pressure, some irrigation fluid should splash up and out of the wound. Be careful not to splash irrigation fluid in your eyes.
What if you don’t have a commercial irrigation setup?
Trick of the Trade
Irrigate wound using an 18-gauge needle with a clear plastic cup as a shield
An alternative approach
Irrigate wound using an 18-gauge angiocatheter with a clear urine cup as a shield
It makes me a little nervous to irrigate a wound with a needle (because of the unpredictable movements of patients). Also, we don’t have clear plastic cups in our ED. So, I rigged a similar setup using an 18-gauge angiocatheter and urine cup.
Use an 18-gauge needle to poke a tiny hole in the bottom of the urine cup. You may need to widen the hole a little by poking the plastic several times just adjacent to the initial hole.
Slide the 18-gauge angiocatheter into the hole and irrigate away!
Thanks to
Dr. Gemma Morabito (Rome, Italy) for telling me about this great idea on her site Medicinadurgenza
. The trick and video are by
Dr. Ciro Paolillo of
A Life At Risk blog fame!
Author information
ALiEM Founder and CEO
Professor and Digital Innovation Lab Director
Department of Emergency Medicine
University of California, San Francisco
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