Page 17 - OASC March 2021 Newsletter

Healing the Skin around the Stoma...
— Last Updated: March 6, 2019 by VeganOstomyCategories Ostomy Care and Tips By Eric Pollsinelli of VeganOstomy
The ideal appliance will fit in a way that protects your skin while also providing a durable, and secure fit. Unfortunately, not every ostomate can achieve this balance so easily, so many will experience a breakdown of skin around the stoma.
This happened to me a short while after getting my ostomy, as my new stoma was still shrinking down from its swollen state. I was quite inexperienced, so rather than change my appliance more often, I’d try to get 5+ day wear time, which meant that as my stoma became smaller, it left room for my output to eat away at my skin.
As you can see from the photos below, I had fairly deep erosion of the skin, and it hurt a lot. At the time,
I had used the “crusting technique”, which involves putting stoma powder on the exposed, raw part of my skin, dust it off and apply a barrier using either barrier wipes or cavilon spray. You do this a few times to build up protection on the skin, and to allow the wafer to stick to something other than the powder. This technique does work for many people, but it worked very slowly for me.
More recently, as I’ve been in between wafer samples, I began to get more breakdown of the skin. I attempted to remedy this using the crusting technique, but I wasn’t getting the results I wanted; so instead, I opted to simply use a barrier ring without any powder or barrier wipes. The results impressed me, and my skin has probably never looked that good around the stoma.
Now, I continue to use a barrier ring when I notice more breakdown of the skin. I may continue to use them more regularly, but they are quite expensive and I’m not done trying new appliances that might offer a better fit. n
March/21
Very painful peristomal skin Barrier rings can be applied 28 days post op to a wafer (just remember to
remove the release liner from the wafer first!).
— https://www.veganostomy.ca/healing-skin-around-the-stoma/
Barrier rings can also be molded to fit around any size or shape of a stoma.
Healthy skin around the stoma.
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