acticoat......who has used it?

We use acticoat on our cardiac surgery wounds (sternal and svg) that have dehissed (sorry can't remember the spelling of that word right now) or are continuing to drain and erethymous...so far our infection rate seems to have decreased a bit with the extra attention...

I work home health. We have been using acticoat alot. at first we used it on a pt that had a burn on his foot so we used the acticoat burn. We then had a patient that had a wound on her elbow no matter what we did it wouldn't heal. the dr had no clue what to do. The dr told us to do whatever we could to try and heal it. we tried the acticoat burn product on it. and it healed it! doing research on the web I saw a product Acticoat 7. I was wondering if anyone has used acticoat and have had such amazing results as we have had. is there any thing we should know...reasons we shouldn't use it? complications? any information on this would be great.

Also...has anyone used that new tegaderm absorb product? like a see-through duoderm? do they work?

thanks!

I work in a LTC that receives many admits with pressure ulcers. I have used both products. The Acticoat is wonderful. The Tegraderm absorb is also very good and did not irritate or rip the skin.

Acticoat is great. But the cost seems to be the prohibitive factor in its use. One place used it fairly regulary on diabetic feet with great results. Another place felt it way too expensive and even refused to agree that a healed wound in three months with Acticoat was more cost effective than six months on "traditional" dressings

I work in a long term facility and have used the Acticoat 7 with great results. One of the recommendations from Smith and Nephew Representatives has been to only use sterile water to clean and activate. Saline deactivates the dressing.