Venous leg ulcer and compression bandage

[Melcare]

I’m conducting a study in the UK about compliance among patients with venous leg ulcers who are wearing compression bandages (not tights, socks, hosiery kits or sleeves) to find out solutions on how to improve compliance to help healing. If you are interested, please let me so we can go through some preliminary screening questions to make sure you are the right patient profile we are looking to interview and then schedule the interview that will happen online (on Teams). The incentive is 60 pounds for a 60 minute interview and you can ask to be paid with a voucher (no bank account details needed!). If you have any question, don’t hesitate to ask. Thank you!

[NaturesArtist]

Although I haven’t got a venous ulcer at present, I do get a lot of problems with my legs due to oedema from high doses if Prednisolone for Giant Cell Arteritis. Which is an autoimmune condition! I also have venous I sufficiently in both legs. Both my legs end up with such bad water retention that they’ve developed water blisters. These very often burst and cause severe water leakage, cellulitis and ulcers. The district nurse came out twice a week to put compression bandages on. Inodine is used as well. Once the sores start to dry up. The smaller infected ones have soft border dressings on top of the Inodine. A bandage is put on . Then a second bandage and the yellow line.

[Melcare in reply to NaturesArtist]

Thank you for your reply, unfortunately we are looking for patients with a current diagnosis of venous leg ulcer. Wishing you all the best!

[WeightWarrior]

I'm just coming out of the end of over a year's worth of healing a venous leg ulcer - it has finally closed over but the skin's still very delicate in that area and at the end of April the skin did open up again but we dressed it immediately and re-healed by about mid May, luckily. Still taking great care of the area not to snag, bump etc, washing separately to the shower in a bowl, plenty of cream etc etc etc. The leg was bandaged from roughly October '21 to April-ish '22. I'm now in compression stockings, having seen the lympho clinic at the hospital. I suspect I may not be the right candidate. I'm more than happy to say for free, "Please, patients, do not assume that compression can let you get away with not putting your feet up - it is not the case! I first thought it would be ok to get away with doing just a little bit more standing up (pain permitting) every day but nope, it hindered healing profoundly if I didn't keep my feet up almost the entire time, even in bandaging. Please, patients, listen to your nurses, just get those feet up all the time, watch a lot of TV or do puzzles etc, accept family's help with chores etc and be...forgive the pun...patient! It will save you time and pain in the long run!" You can quote me on that one if it helps just one person heal quicker!