In case you have got an ostomy, it should be one of your top priorities to take care of the skin around your stoma. But what’s quite alarming here is that persitomal skin complications are more common than you think.

In this article, we are going to state some facts about peristomal skin complications.

75% of people with ostomies develop these complications

Moreover:

• About 37% of the people with ostomies get these complications developed within 90 days after surgery.
• About 87% of the people stomas report itching in their peristomal skin.

Many people with peristomal skin complications do not report the issue

Although 87% of the people with stomas feel itchiness in their peristomal skin, about 2/3 of those people never talk about it to their health care providers. This is may be due to the fact that most of the people think of these complications as a normal part in the post ostomy scenario. And some people do not even consider it a problem.

Peristomal Skin Complication can negatively impact the quality of life

A research suggests that a stoma without any skin complications allows a person to rank his/her overall wellbeing same as that of a normal person. A mild skin complication, however, can push a person’s life quality to a downward spiral.

Severe peristomal skin complications severely impact the quality of life

We talked about the minor peristomal skin complications which can start impacting the quality of life. This equation seems pretty straightforward with a finding which suggests that people with severe PSCs rank their quality of life to be as poor as those related with the severe medical conditions including heart disease and cancer.

Increased healthcare costs

It is a no brainer that when you have a badly impacted quality of life, you are going to consider yourself a person with the worst medical conditions on the planet. This mindset can lead to higher treatment costs. Such people are more prone to getting admitted to hospitals at a higher rate.

Key takeaways

The above mentioned facts may seem pretty surprising to you. It is very important to learn from them. The points that you need to keep in mind based on these facts are as under.

• PSCs are more common than you think.
• PSCs can impact the quality of your life, especially from the perspective of health. That tends to increase healthcare costs.
• PSCs can be avoided by following a skincare routine. For this purpose, you may need to use the ostomy care products which are good enough to protect peristomal skin from getting infected.
• When you see any infection developing in the peristomal skin, you need to contact your doctor or ostomy care nurse.

• ostomy care