Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations OOOOOOOOOOOOOH BABY!

Ditto Burger!

Check her thread I'll post an update!

Just because it was posted as a suggestion in this thread, I would like to say that rubbing alcohol has no place in cleaning wounds. Clean soap, clean water. Alcohol denatures the exposed tissue and actually hinders healing. Best choice is to get some Betadine solution (generically povidone) and soak the wound in a diluted solution of this. Alcohol really hurts and does not do any good. Unfortunately, there is the "no pain, no gain" aspect of using alcohol and hurting from it that may have kept in use in spite of its ineffectiveness. Its use in swabbing the antecubital fossa of the arm before blood is drawn persists mostly because of tradition.

Just because it was posted as a suggestion in this thread, I would like to say that rubbing alcohol has no place in cleaning wounds. Clean soap, clean water. Alcohol denatures the exposed tissue and actually hinders healing. Best choice is to get some Betadine solution (generically povidone) and soak the wound in a diluted solution of this. Alcohol really hurts and does not do any good. Unfortunately, there is the "no pain, no gain" aspect of using alcohol and hurting from it that may have kept in use in spite of its ineffectiveness. Its use in swabbing the antecubital fossa of the arm before blood is drawn persists mostly because of tradition.

RL - Great advice. Thanks. Is hydrogen peroxide then similar reacting on wounds as alcohol?

Doesn't the alcohol at least sterilize the skin surface before getting a shot?

Careful CB1 - RL is a MD.

How would I know unless I looked at his profile.

I'm a DM (Dumb Moron.)

So Proctor and Gamble is making a mint selling antibacterial hand cleaners by the gallons? It sure has always felt that I was being sanitized when I use it.
This is a good topic I would like to explore further. When I was a kid, it was always merthiolate and mercurochrome(sp). Do I understand that isopropyl alcohol is good for sanitizing, as in before a shot, or not. I think I am undersanding that it adversely effects the surrounding tissue of a wound, which will hinder the healing process.

OK. Povidone, diluted iodine solution. We have the pre-soaked gauze packages.

I wont be wasting any more whiskey on bullet wounds.

Hydrogen peroxide is good for an initial cleansing of some wounds but should never be used to treat a wound long term. We treat a lot of open wounds at our office and have seen the effects of hydrogen peroxide and alchol on the tissue around a wound. It can be very drying and sometimes looks as if it is has necroced the tissue.

Brettski, Theo, JWHAP and I had the pleasure of sitting next to Layton at one of the 2008 Pond Boss Conference dinners. When Layton began telling stories in a matter of minutes he reduced all of us to tears with his funny stories. Yep, he's that funny.

The World Famous Lake Thunderbird stories, IIRC!

Alcohol is not very good at sterilizing skin surfaces. A large random series of skin biopsies by dermatologists with and without alcohol prep showed no protective advantage (no fewer infections) from prepping with alcohol. This is a good example where omitting an alcohol swab prior to an injection or taking of a blood sample could result in a malpractive suit(in the unlikely but remotely possible event that the site became infected) since the idea is so ingrained in the public's mind. Hydrogen peroxide is not as damaging as alcohol as far as I know. It is a good sterilizer, and cleans up blood stains (on clothes too) better than anything else that exists. Nevertheless, there are some physicians who feel it is not the best thing to pour into an open wound. I would not recommend using peroxide directly in a wound but it is great for cleaning around it. Just plain soap and water or best Betadine which what is used for surgical preps a lot. It is also painless (the sting in the old fashioned tincture of iodine due to the alcohol in it). As far as the stories which I told at the pond boss dinner, I have been encouraged to write them as a post on this forum, but have been reluctant to do so as I fear they would only seem as funny as that night if they were read using beer goggles.

How about those hand washes that are supposed to antibacterial... They wreak of rubbing alcohol! Do they work well at disinfecting your hands? I ask as with my line of work, I often don't have access to soap and water, just the alcohol based hand sanitizers.

Well there ya go. We will develop a Runkle thread with encryption that cannot be read without a pair of the new hi-tech PB beer goggles. Sunil will be in charge of field testing. They will have polarized lenses to compete with Oakley and others. I can see myself right now, working the crowd in my Runkles.

One time when I was a kid I got a fishhook (OK, both the trebles on a little floating Rapala) stuck in my finger when a smallish LMB wasn't quite ready for me to pull them out of it's lip.

My Dad yanked 'em out with the needlenose pliers out of his tackle box and some extreme prejudice. I've spent much of the rest of my life trying to set hooks in bass lips as retaliation for that event. It doesn't appear that I've put a dent in their aggressiveness or hatred of barbed hooks but, if we all keep up our efforts, we may someday show them who's (pond) boss.

Or maybe not. At least they don't heat up and explode at 3000 degrees or so.

I'll never use a metal spatula to flip a pancake on a teflon griddle again, I can tell you that.

Rainman, you're 'the' man.

I offer you this link as an example of a typical alcohol wipe study. As to alcohol hand wipes, they often use other agents in combination with alchol and the alcohols they employ may not evaporate as quickly as isopropyl alcohol. To sterilize instruments in alcohol (which works) you have to submerge them a minimum of 10 minutes. Contrast that with the few seconds between the time the phlebotomist swabs your arm, waves over it to air dry it and draws your blood. It is merely a ritual. My point though really was- don't inflict pain on yourself by pouring alcohol into a cut thinking you are doing some good.


http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2503183