Not a lot of people know much about ostomy. In fact, I would venture to say that the majority of people don’t even know that hundreds of thousands of people are walking around with stomas everyday of their lives. The nice thing about this is that you can usually keep the fact that you have an ostomy on the down low for the most part. Ostomy bags have improved a lot over the past few years, and you can even find some pouches that excel in hiding under clothes and whatnot.
I have a lot of ostomate friends who are worried about being able to hide their ostomy pouches effectively underneath their pants and shirts, so for them this is a huge deal. If you are asking me personally, I would tell you that I don’t really care much if people notice my ostomy pouch. I definitely used to be more insecure about the fact that I had to wear one all the time, but I guess time heals all wounds in that sense (except for my stoma, if you know what I mean).
There are some notable differences between various ostomy pouches, so I wanted to come on here quick and write about the difference between the main two ones that I am familiar with – more specifically, I will be talking about the one-piece ostomy pouch and the two-piece ostomy pouch.
Now at surface value, these pouches are exactly what they sound like in their title. One features an ostomy pouch system that comes together as one whole unit, while the other is broken down into two separate pieces. Now to talk about the differences between the two, I will first start with the one-piece system. So the one-piece ostomy pouch is designed so that the skin barrier is attached to the ostomy bag at all times, meaning that it is all one unit. The one-piece pouch may sound like it’s more convenient, but I can assure you that that is hardly the case.
In reality, the one-piece ostomy bag tends to be the least convenient of the two. If you have not had an ostomy, then I will need to inform you about changing your ostomy pouch. Ostomates have to regularly change their pouch to empty out all the contents or to simply throw it away and put a new pouch on. With the one-piece pouch, one has to take off the entire skin barrier as well as the actual bag when changing pouches. This can become an issue if you are doing this often, because changing the skin barrier too often can lead to irritation for some people.
The two-piece system is nice because the skin barrier and the ostomy bag can detach from each other, meaning the whole way you go about changing your ostomy pouch can be a lot easier. If you don’t need to change out the skin barrier and just the bag, then you’ll have a much easier time with the two-piece system! I will say that one-piece systems are usually easier to hide under clothes if you are in social situations where you don’t want anyone to discover your stoma secret. Anyways, I hope you learned something from this article, and I wish you the best on all your future ostomy endeavors.
Gastrointestinal Health 