How to Remove Your Dressings

After your shoulder surgery you will have dressings over the incisions in your shoulder.

Following arthroscopic surgery in theatre, steristrips will be placed to close the arthroscopy incisions, then a large absorbent dressing will be placed over your shoulder covering the incisions and steristrips. The morning after your operation the nurses will invariably change your dressings before you go home. Your nurse will remove the large absorbent dressing and place smaller waterproof dressings over the steristrips covering your incisions. If the steristrips need changing the nurse will replace them at this time. You can shower over these waterproof dressings until they are removed.

These dressings will need to be removed in most cases 5 to 7 days after your operation. When you remove the dressings the steristips can be left in place. You can shower over the steristrips until they fall off by themselves.

In this video I demonstrate removing your dressings after arthroscopic surgery.
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