Wound healing - stitches haven’t closed

[Sunnyday14558]

My son had surgery on his stomach ten days ago. Now the butterfly stitches are falling off, I can see a small section hasn’t closed properly. Does anyone have experience with this? I’m not sure how serious it is.

That needs seeing, it looks infected

Yes definitley looks infected

I’ve now spoken to the surgeons at hospital and they’ve said it looks ok. They’ve said it’s not infected and will heal on its own. I’ve put a couple of butterfly stitches on it to try and bring the edges closer together. I’ll keep an eye out for if it gets any worse too.

Well I can see a bubble of yellow/green stuff where it hasn’t healed, plus it’s red around it.

I’m a surgeon- looks like there is some very minor infection at that end which will sort itself out . Has the wound been cleaned/ dressed by a health care professional? It needs to be. Your practice nurse could help .
Don’t try to close the open area with steristrips - you can’t at 10 days and you are just trapping potential infected fluid inside. It’s better to let the open area just heal from the bottom upwards now. It will heal nicely so don’t worry .

Thank you. I’ve taken the strips off. It hasn’t gotten worse but is still a bit red. I can’t get an appointment today with the practice nurse. Do you have advise on how I can dress it? Thank you

It is bad that there is no practice nurse - have you seen one at all. When DS had 12 stitches in his knee we did 4 nurse appointments over 2 weeks to check over healing we had a bit like thah and she dealt with it

Ideally you need to clean with gauze swabs dipped in savlon / an antiseptic cleaning solution. You could use boiled and cooled water as an alternative.
Use a non adherent surgical dressing - a pharmacist should be able to help you.

Hopefully you have got an appointment to see your practice nurse tomorrow .

Definitely NO SAVLON!!!!!

Tap water is fine to clean it and just a dry dressing

Don't use any more steristrips it's too late for that