Using the UCS™ Sterile, pre-moistened wound debridement cloth.

I posted a comment on YouTube. As it’s adverse, I’m also posting this version here in case it’s taken down.

The product in question is the UCS™ Sterile, pre-moistened wound debridement cloth. It’s used for removing necrotic tissue from leg ulcers.

To expand on what I’ve said online, the cloth, which as expected is quite rough, is soaked in a fluid which feels extremely acidic – or intensely saline, no way to tell – with results that you might expect when applied to raw flesh. Severe pain! For those of you lucky enough never to have experienced a leg ulcer, say hi to mine:-

I’m expecting the ankle bone to be poking through pretty soon.

They are amazingly susceptible to pain as so many nerve endings are exposed/damaged – even a draught can be agonising, so you can maybe imagine what scraping at it with a rough and apparently acid-soaked cloth is like. I knew it was going to be wet, but I expected something like Octenisan (same pH as skin), or even normal saline, not something that causes pain simply by its presence.

In my view this product is entirely unsuitable for its intended purpose unless used with a local anaesthetic. Fat chance of that!

NB: I accept that the subjective experience of pain is widely variable, and there was a time when I’d have said that my tolerance was higher than most. Not any more. The better part of three years of lymphoedema, and 8-9 months of this has changed that totally.

I still believe, however, that I know when something is needlessly painful, and this is. Replacing whatever fluid this is soaked in with either Octenisan, Prontosan (a neutral wound irrigation solution), or even normal saline (which I’ve used and it does not, of itself, cause pain), would be a vast improvement. True, it would still be a painful process, as with much else associated with ulcer treatment, by its very nature it could not be otherwise, but replacing the moistening agent would go a long way to dialing down the pain