Tips for improving efficiency with surgical bandages

While at the Fetch conference in Long Beach, California, Michael Jaffe, DVM, MS, CCRP, DACVS, sat down with dvm360 for an interview and shared what got him interested in pursuing veterinary surgery and how he became even more passionate about pain management and rehabilitation. He also gave some quick tips for using bandages with post-operative patients and some of his best practices.

The following is a partial transcript of the video.

Michael Jaffe, DVM, MS, CCRP, DACVS: I've always liked surgery. Going back to when I was in high school, working for a veterinarian, I was always drawn to whatever they were doing at the time in surgery. When I went to vet school I worked in the small animal surgery department, and was just always have seemed to be drawn to it. As I've gone through practice, I realized that surgery is really half of what needs to be done to get these patients back to full function and that physical therapy and rehab is a really important component of that. And so several years ago, I sought certification and training in that and that's really an area that I'm very, very interested in passionate about.

I think it's really important to pay attention to the reason why we're applying the bandage and looking at the specific tissue, whether it is tissue that is currently showing signs that there's still active infection, there's necrotic tissue that needs to be there to brighten still, if it's healthy tissue that is starting to form granulation tissue or if we have granulation tissue already present.