Patient/caregiver was educated on measuring the ileostomy site as follows:
- Measure your stoma regularly, preferably on every bag change, at least during the initial few weeks of initiating on ileostomy.
- The stoma size is likely to change the heavily during this time and proper measurement of stoma helps with proper fixation of bag, prevent leaks, and avoid irritation of skin around the stoma from leakage of stool. This also helps with the bag staying in place for longer duration and saving on supplies.
- Stoma measuring guides come along with the ileostomy supplies. These measuring guides have holes of different sizes, each indicating different sized stoma.
- Among these many different holes cut on the stoma measuring guide, you will aptly choose the one that best matches with your stoma size. Try different holes of measuring guide by putting them around your stoma, to pick the one that is closest in measure to your stoma.
- The back of the wafers could have cutting guides, denoting the lines of cut appropriate to the individual stoma size. If the wafer is lacking the cutting guide or the user is unsure of the stoma size, then it requires some additional work of using the stoma measuring guide and picking the hole on stoma measuring guide that closely corresponds to the size of your stoma.
