Frequently asked questions…?

How long can you keep a Cerdak Dressing on?

Dressing changes should be done in accordance to the level of exudate being produced. Dressings should be changed before they are fully saturated or at around 70% saturation. This will be evident by the discoloration of the back of the dressing.

We suggest daily dressing replacements for the first few days of treatment to gauge at what rate the dressing is being saturated.

Should Cerdak only be used for high exudating wounds?

No. Unlike other absorbative dressings, Cerdak’s absorbative action is only triggered when there is enough exudate on the wound bed to make contact with the Ceramic beads.

What does this mean:

– Low exudating wounds will not dry out. A layer of clean moisture is maintained on the wound bed.

– If colonisation occurs and the body increases exudate levels to mobilise the bacteria, the compromised exudate will be absorbed.

– Cerdak is used on low exudating wounds to prevent colonisation and subsequently infections. Thus, we are preventing high exudating wounds.

– Cerdak dressing replacement intervals are longer with low exudating wounds. The dressing takes longer to be saturated.

Can I cut the Cerdak dressing into smaller sizes?

No, we don’t advise cutting Cerdak dressings. For this reason, Cerdak has a wide variety of dressing sizes available; from the small 5×2.5cm to the very large 20x30cm!

Unfortunately, we are all humans, and nobody cuts perfectly straight. Attempting to cut Cerdak dressings to a smaller size usually results in small Ceramic beads all over the floor!

I don’t want to change the dressing regularly, why must I do it?

Regular dressing replacements means the wound is kept clean. By continuously removing the exudate containing inflammatory presences, the wound is helped through the inflammatory phase to the proliferation phase.

Once in the proliferation phase, Cerdak ensures that the wound stays there and that the cell proliferation is not compromised, but rather optimised.

This is how Cerdak treats and prevents infection, by continuous physical removal. Some key effects of regular changes:

– The wound is clean upon dressing removal.

– No more smelly wounds during dressing changes.

– No more leaking wounds during dressing changes.

– No more complicated wound cleaning procedures, dressing changes are MUCH faster.

How does it remove bacteria?

Cerdak is engineered to have a unique and effective physical action of removal of bacteria. This action is made effective by 2 actions working in combination to remove bacteria contained in wound exudate.

Wound exudate produced by the body to contain the bacterial presence on the wound is absorbed and locked away inside the ceramic Cerdak beads. At the same time the bacteria contained in the exudate bind to the Ceramic surface due to colloidal particle behaviour and a combination of multiple physical characteristics of the ceramic bead’s surface.

Did you know Cerdak’s bacterial binding is so effective that Cerdak has been used as a wound sampling device?

Cerdak used as a sampling device has a bacterial strain identification accuracy of 91% compared to 74% of conventional wound swabs (reference to Graz study) demonstrating the superior bacterial binding ability of the technology.