Gauze is the dressing everyone recognizes, and it is also the one that calls for the most caution.
Its advantages are short: gauze is cost-effective and widely available. That is the whole case for it.
The disadvantages are much longer. Gauze doesn’t hold in moisture. It performs non-selective debridement, which can lead to removing new granulation tissue with dressing changes. It is prone to bacterial contamination, and it needs a second dressing over it.
The second of those is worth explaining, because it is the one that matters to a healing wound. Moistened gauze provides mechanical debridement when removed — it pulls tissue away as it comes off. Non-selective means it doesn’t tell the difference between dead tissue and the new granulation tissue a wound is building to fill itself in. A dressing change can take some of the new tissue with it.
Gauze has a narrow use: the early stages of deeper wounds that need packing, with changes multiple times a day when used that way.
None of this means gauze is the wrong dressing where it has been chosen on purpose. It means gauze is a specific tool rather than a default, and a wound that sits under gauze for weeks is worth asking about.
Gauze is one of the dressing types a provider may choose for a pressure sore. Talk with your provider about which one to use.