How do you keep a pressure sore dry if someone is incontinent?

If needed, use a moisture barrier to protect the area from bodily fluids, and ask your provider what type to use. Not being able to control your bladder or bowels makes a pressure sore more likely.

There’s one type of product for this, and the choice of which one belongs to a clinician. When caring for a stage I sore: if needed, use a moisture barrier to protect the area from bodily fluids. Ask your provider what type of moisture barrier to use.

That’s the whole of the direct advice. Wound Wizard can’t name a product, an application routine or how often to use it, and won’t guess.

What is clear is why it matters enough to have its own instruction. Not being able to control your bladder or bowels is one of the things that make a pressure sore more likely. The others are using a wheelchair or staying in bed for a long time, being an older adult, not being able to move parts of the body without help, having a disease that affects blood flow, and not getting enough nutrition.

Moisture also matters for the wound itself. With leg wounds, keep the dressing and the skin around it dry. Healthy tissue that gets too wet can soften, causing the wound to get bigger. Softened skin is how a wound grows.

The rest of the skin care for pressure sores applies here too: care for healthy skin by keeping it clean and moisturized, and check your skin for pressure sores every day. For anyone managing incontinence, those checks are happening anyway, which makes them easier to fit in.

One practical point about who to ask. A moisture barrier is the kind of thing a district nurse, wound nurse or continence service will have a settled view on, and asking gets you a specific product rather than a shelf of options.

What to watch for

Ask your provider what type of moisture barrier to use. A specific product recommendation should come from the people treating the wound.

Healthy tissue around a wound that gets too wet can soften, causing the wound to get bigger. Skin that looks white and soft around a sore is a reason to have the routine reviewed.

Check the skin every day. If a pressure sore changes or a new one forms, tell your provider.

Contact your provider right away if blisters or an open sore develop, or there are signs of infection: a foul odor, pus, redness and tenderness around the sore, warm or swollen skin close to it, or fever.

Wound Wizard is general education and can’t assess skin or recommend a product. Your own clinician is the right person to ask.

What we look at

  • Examining the skin in the affected area
  • Recommending a moisture barrier product
  • Reviewing continence care alongside wound care
  • Checking whether the dressing is coping

Sources

  1. How to care for pressure sores — MedlinePlus, U.S. National Library of Medicine https://www.medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000740.htm
  2. Venous ulcers - self-care — MedlinePlus, U.S. National Library of Medicine https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000744.htm