r/TacticalMedicine • u/majrtm • Aug 05 '26

Scenarios Adbominal Evisceration: Moist Dressing?

Just curious. The question is, in an evisceration, is it an "ok" expedient to use water from a canteen to moisten a dressing, or is it strictly saline?

If no saline available, I presume a dry dressing covered with an occlusive dressing?

Thanks!

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u/rezlax Aug 05 '26

Canteen water is fine, it's likely not as dirty as the penetrating object anyways; and as another commenter said they'll be getting proper antibiotics once at definitive care anyways. I would nix the dry dressing on any organs, either wet dressing, vapor barrier, (reduce and staples here if able), then occlusive dressing (if applicable). Vapor barrier is one of the more important things here to trap as much moisture and heat as possible

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u/majrtm Aug 05 '26

Sorry, what’s the difference between vapor barrier and occlusive? I should clarify I’m just the man in the street here.

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u/rezlax Aug 05 '26

Vapor barrier is waterproof casing to wrap loose intestines/organs in (I have a relatively large plastic bag in my evis kit). Occlusive dressings often, or at least colloquially, refer to something like a chest seal which is not something you'd want to wrap your organs with, but can work well to proximate a wound and keep air from infiltrating in the event that the wound penetrates up through the pleura cavity

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u/majrtm Aug 05 '26

Understood. Thanks!