Because riding your motorcycle exposes you to open air, you face the risk of flying off your bike if an irresponsible driver hits you on the road. When you impact the ground, your skin may scrape across the surface and create a painful abrasion known as road rash.
Some road rashes are treatable at home while more severe rashes require medical attention. A traumatic tattoo can result from a severe and painful road rash.
How traumatic tattoos happen
WebMD explains that after a collision throws you off your bike, you could scrape your skin across a surface that leaves debris in your skin wounds. Bikers can accumulate small objects such as metal, glass, dirt or rocks. This debris creates a traumatic tattoo in your road rash. It is important to remove the debris as it may become permanently trapped in your skin.
Treatment for cleaning road rash
Some motorcyclists clean the debris from their wounds, but in many instances, bikers need a doctor to do it. Your physician may recommend wound debridement. This is a form of surgical scrubbing where a surgery team will remove foreign objects from your skin. Anesthesia may be necessary during this procedure.
Wound debridement also cleans out dead or infected tissue. Given that skin wounds expose your body to outside infections, your doctors should treat you as soon as possible. Some accident patients take antibiotics to fight off bacteria.
Keeping an eye on road rash recovery
Cleaning a traumatic tattoo from your road rash should help you heal properly. Still, you should get checked for possibly deeper injuries such as broken bones or tissue damage. Some people discover that their road rashes do not heal even after two weeks have passed. Knowing the full extent of your injuries is important as your treatment costs may factor into legal compensation.
