When a sutured wound opens up, it's called a dehiscence. You have 2 reasonable choices. One is to return to your Mohs surgeon. The second is to take care of the wound yourself. In order to get this to heal properly, you need to do the following. Clean the wound thoroughly with sterile normal saline until you get down to normal appearing pink tissue. If it starts bleeding, that's not necessarily a bad thing, because bleeding will foster the growth of granulation tissue which is rich in blood vessels and is capable of filling the wound all the way to the surface. Apply Vaseline to the wound and cover the wound with a non-stick bandaid. Clean the wound daily with the saline and Q-tips and do not leave behind any yellowish material. Re-cover the wound as before. When the granulation tissue gets to just below the skin surface, confine your wound care to gentle dabbing of the wound with a gauze pad moistened with the saline and re-cover the wound. This will allow new skin to cover the wound from the outside edges to the central part of the wound and contract the wound at the same time. This should be completed very quickly and the wound will be pink but smaller and level with the rest of the skin in that area. At that point it's OK to keep the wound uncovered.This process will leave you with a normal appearing area once the pinkness fades away. This is called second intention healing and more often then not will result in the area appearing pretty much normal. Most doctors doing Mohs surgery have no training or experience with this. No antibiotic ointment is necessary and is actually warned against by the CDC.Why don't more or even all Mohs surgeons utilize this form of healing?? Well, as one Mohs surgeon once told me: "We repair EVERYTHING! Ya know why? Ya don't get paid for letting it heal"!!Good luck. jlr
