Why is my incision still draining?

[MrBigDog]

On November 18th I had back surgery, an L3-L4 laminectomy, and an L4-L5 discectomy. Everything went like clockwork for the first two weeks or so, then the incision started to drain. Not so much at first, then it started draining so much serosanguinous fluid, I was forced to use feminine napkins to absorb it, and that wasn't enough to catch it all. At one point I was changing the pads several times a day and still had to keep a towel double over my waistband. Finally, the doctor put me back in the hospital on January 28th, to go in and clean out the two large pockets of fluid, found during an MRI two days prior.

After this second surgery, he sent out samples of the fluid and tissue to the lab for culturing. In the meantime, I was kept in the hospital on IV antibiotics and had two drains connected to some sort of suction device. After three days, they pulled the drains and I was sent home on two different antibiotics, along with home health, who supplied materials for dressing changes. The cultures came back clear, so there was no infection, but the damn incision started to drain again, and there was a lot of serosanguinous drainage again, but no infection.

Today, February 15th, I was seen by the doctor again, he wants to wait until Friday to remove the stitches and see if it starts to drain again. He also informed me that all of this is probably caused by the high doses of blood thinners I am on. During both of these surgeries, I have had to take enoxaparin injections twice daily for a week before the procedure, and again for a week after along with my normal dosage of 10mg of warfarin, until my INR is 2.5 or better. Normally I try to keep my INR in the range of 2.5 to 3.5, but it never fails to take at least, two to three weeks to get it back under control.

Has anyone had this kind of problem with healing and drainage that just won't stop?

[HollyHeski Administrator]

Sadly yes, I am very prone to slow healing and drainage issues. Sometimes with infections sometimes not.Doctors have not given me any explosions.

Keep going - it will heal xx

[Star13]

After my laminectomy I developed a huge hematoma which took months to resolve, in fact almost a year and the wound was slow to heal. I was on twice daily fragmin too so I can’t understand why they say that’s what’s causing it but then I’m not a Doctor. I hope it heals soon.

[MrBigDog in reply to Star13]

Thanks for the reply, and I believe they are blaming it on the blood thinners because they have no experience treating someone like me. At first, they did think I was suffering from a hematoma but found it was only two pockets of serosanguinous fluid, that was sampled and then flushed out, before closing the incision back up. I'll know more in a couple of days...

[MaryF Administrator]

Hi, not had this myself, but have heard of it at times with other people, please do keep checking in with the doctor as it is important that you have support for this with monitoring, until they can get this under control for you. MaryF

[KellyInTexas Administrator]

I have had issues with hematomas ( only the large ones) being slow to reabsorb. That’s down to thinners, and I can agree to that one.

I’ve not had surgery since being diagnosed with APS/ commencement of warfarin.

I would hazard an “expert patient” guess that your situation might have something to do with the connective tissue realm …

I do know that any past surgeries I have had, my surgeons have noted my connective tissue is like “cotton candy” ( UK calls this candy floss) . Some surgeons also lovingly call it “wet toilet paper syndrome.”

I’ve had surgical complications because of this.

Makes me wonder…