Tacky but refined: a "slick" technique for dressings that hold better.

For decades benzoin has been used to enhance the "stickiness" of the skin for improved adherence complementing the protective and functional aspects of well-constructed surgical bandages/dressings. The fully adherent and longer-lasting pressure dressing is both aesthetically pleasing to the patient (and surgeon) and, at the same time, functions to decrease seroma or hematoma formation, enhances antisepsis by blocking transient bacterial contamination, and inhibits traumatic sabotage of surgical wounds due to patient overactivity or inadvertent collision with a door jam, car door, table leg, or grandchild, etc. Also, when the bandage looks good, the patient realizes the operation was a success (at least aesthetically). Although simple, our additional steps of deoiling the skin with acetone, followed by multiple compress/release cycles of gauze to the Mastisol area reaps benefits to the patient and surgeon both in function (adherence) and in the production of a truly "dressy" beautiful and long-lasting dressing. In this way, the dressing "bed" is not only more receptive to one's aesthetically pleasing bandage, but is more tacky, yet refined. This same technique can be utilized prior to application of adhesive strips to healing wounds after sutures have been removed, allowing them to "stay on" longer with potentially better cosmesis and less spreading of the scar.