Difficulties with Stoma's

So the problems that can occur with stomas is mainly patients complain about skin irritation. They also sometimes can experience leakage from the pouches. And the skin irritation is normally fairly straightforward to treat. You might just need either a skin protection barrier, some kind of a barrier wipe, or sometimes it is that you actually have to change the pouch because the pouches are made up of different components and in terms of a leakage again the best thing will be to see your local stomach care nurse who can have a discussion with you see what is causing the leaks again it might be you just need to change the type of pouch from say for example a flat pouch to a convex pouch or sometimes you just need an extra reinforcement and sometimes it could also be that the size of your stoma has just changed so it's good to just check the size again and make sure the bag is being cut to the appropriate size. The only other problem sometimes if people don't you have to always order your supplies in advance and your supplies will take about 10 to 14 days to get to you. So it's good that patients really have got this in hand. Place your order when you have at least about 10 to 15 pouches left. You don't want to wait till you've got two pouches left. You've placed an order and it takes a very long time for it to come. So always place your order ahead of time and you don't run out of pouches because again that could be a problem. and the final thing is really every patient should have access to a local stoma care nurse so if you don't have one you need to check with your hospital and make sure that you have access to one. It's good to have a checkup at least once a year even if you've had the stoma for a very long time.