Son's elbow graze not healing

[trio-of-chaos]

Hello.

My son grazed his elbow on the school yard over a week ago, and it's still very raw, I'm wondering if it should be healed by now? We've kept it covered with a breathable dressing (although due to where it is we've needed to put quite a lot of tape on top so actually it may not be as breathable?) He was in a lot of pain when he first did it and he cries if anyone/thing even brushes against it now. I've attached a photo, any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

It needs air on it, leave him in short sleeves and no dressing it should heal up fine.

Leave it to the air

All that red skin indicates its infected, staph probably, you need to apply fusidic acid cream to it asap. Its prescription only.

@Ohsugarhoneyicetea oh crap really? I've got some of that in the medical box actually.

@Hellocatshome @AlasEarwacs I had read some advice from a GP a few months ago about wounds healing better when covered, which is contrary to what I had thought too. Now I'm unsure!

Hi, Im a nurse and work with wounds daily. Research shows that wounds heal better when in a more moist environment, ‘leaving to dry’ is not recommended.

There is quite a lot of erythema (redness) around the wound which is a flag for infection as well as the delayed healing. I would suggest a GP appointment as I imagine that it needs some sort of antibiotic treatment.

@User310 thank you. Going to take him to a walk in to get checked tomorrow. Thanks again

@User310 do you have a reference for this please? I’ve done a quick Google search and have found it as advice on lots of websites but none of them reference any empirical studies or systematic reviews. The reason I ask is that my lived experience is that covering this sort of superficial scrape results in a wet sloughy infected wound (as in this case) but grazes and scrapes left uncovered heal quickly (of course it should be covered if engaging in an activity that’s likely to get it dirty), so curious to see how strong the evidence is. Thanks and sorry for side tracking the thread!