G tube woes

Like an infection around the stoma? Cameron has never had one. His always looks great and is rarely red, but I clean his a little differently than most people. What do you clean it with? Do you use gauze? Does it leak very much? This is what I do: I use a couple cotton swabs dipped in Cameron's Aquaphor Gentle Wash. I then clean it with tap water, dry it and then do a layer of Bacitracin. I then do 2 gauze underneath it.

Infected how? Actual infection or granulation issues?We fought granulation daily with our foster son, our son's wasn't as bad.We used guaze pads under our son's mickey, as ddw describes. But he had a lot of seepage, infected or not.We used bactroban twice a day too.Are you using an antibiotic cream preventatively? If not, I would.

Same as the two previous experts described. OK. I will be honest. I only used antibiotic cream when it started looking red and I used a baby wipe instead of all the stuff you are actually supposed to clean it. So maybe I am not the best example setter. But perhaps I was unintentionally onto something. (my DD didn't need her g-tube so wasn't as critical to us as it may be to you). If you are messing with caustic cleaning agents on it too much you might be irritating it which could cause it to get an infection. Also since she is growing so much, I wonder if she needs to thicker tube part that sits inside the stoma. Like the next size up. Any chance she has an allegy to the tube? V is allergic to adhesive and if someone puts tape on her without me catching it and it sits for a few hours, she will usually get a mild infection from the skin irritation. THose are my ideas. Its definately worth keeping on top of.

I have 2 with gtubes. Abbie's always looks great, Nates get's irritated from time to time. I just use baby wipes in between baths to keep the tube boogers off. If it's really bad, I clean normally in the bath tub, use a qtip and put some Neosporin around it, then use a cotton cosmetic(the round ones in the beauty section at any store) pad. Cut it just to the center and put it under around the tube..then tape with 3m medipore tape. I'm not a big fan of the guaze that they get each month. The best thing to help it heal is to clean it, then let it get as much air as possible. Only bandageing when we had to leave the house.

OK. Now I feel a little better for my baby wipe method! The other thing is that we all have bigger kids who are harder to bath than your baby. Your baby might get bathed a lot more often than my 12 year old. Make sure you are getting it really dry after baths and that her diaper is not covering it. Do she have a mic-key? I did find the peg kind a lot harder to keep healthy looking. If the feeding tube is going to be a long term thing you might want to get it switched to a mic-key. Its a super quick surgery worst case but sometimes it can be done without surgery.

Does it leak much? After making sure it's really dry, we put a thin layer of Sensicare to protect it from irritation. My dd muscular causes shifting, so if it happens to be leaking alot, I also use an IV drain sponge around. When she first had it placed, we had problems with granulation (had to use silver nitrate monthly), but for the past 2 1/2 years we've been good.