Tips on how to deal with ostomy pouch ballooning

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Common Problems

Hear from Sarah our Clinical Advisor

From A Bigger Life

Ballooning is a term you might hear in relation to your stoma pouch but you might not understand exactly that is. Basically, it’s whenever your pouch fills up full of air whenever your stoma has produced some wind.

Some tips on how to deal with ballooning:

Drainable pouch
If you are wearing a drainable pouch and usually keep your pouch on for 3-4 days, you will find that ballooning will be more of an issue the longer you keep your pouch on. If possible change your pouch more frequently, so the filter is working more effectively. Perhaps, getting in the routine of changing your pouch every 48 hours if you find ballooning is an issue. If you are wearing a drainable pouch it is much easier to empty the air out through the outlet.

Closed pouch
Whenever you have a colostomy and you are using a closed pouch you might feel that ballooning is a huge problem. You could think about trying a two-piece appliance so you’ll be able to ‘burp’ the bag, so you can release the 2-piece pouch and let the air go out but you’re not removing the whole pouch every time the pouch does balloon up.

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