Day six and there's a yellowish damp patch on my dressing the size of a 50p. Is this the wound infection they warned me about or does everyone get this?

#1Helen W.(Joined Apr 2026 · 11 posts)June 22, 2026, 11:48 pm

Left hip, operated last Tuesday, so day six, home since Thursday. Posting at midnight because that's when the worry arrives.

The hospital sent me home with the big clear waterproof dressing on and said don't touch it, the nurse will change it at the clinic in a week or so. Fine. Tonight I got out of the chair and my pyjama bottoms felt damp on that side and when I looked there's a patch under the dressing, sort of pale yellow, maybe pinkish at the edge, about the size of a 50p piece, and it's got bigger since teatime because I checked then and it was a 5p. It doesn't smell. The skin around the edge of the dressing looks normal to me but it's hard to see the actual scar through the padding.

The leaflet has the list, redness, heat, discharge, fever, and I'm sitting here going DISCHARGE, that's discharge, that's on the list. But I've also read on here that some leaking is normal and nobody tells you the difference. I don't feel ill. Temperature is 37.2 which I think is fine. Pain is no worse than yesterday, if anything better. Do I ring the ward at midnight for a damp patch or is this the kind of thing everyone gets and I'm just the person who read the leaflet too carefully?

#2gardeninggwen(Joined Jan 2025 · 29 posts)June 23, 2026, 7:20 am

Everyone gets some of this, Helen, or near enough. Mine leaked from about day three to day eight and then just stopped, the dressing had a lovely yellow tide mark on it by the time they took it off and the nurse didn't blink.

The bit I'd fix in your head is that "discharge" on the leaflet means a lot of it, or nasty, or still going strong past the first week or so, not a damp 50p. And the fact you feel well and the pain's better is worth a lot. Ring in the morning if it's grown again, not because it's an emergency but because it's what the number is for.

#3pbike60(Joined Feb 2025 · 36 posts)June 23, 2026, 10:05 am

Mine did the same and I was told the ooze is mostly the fluid the joint makes plus a bit of old blood finding its way out, which is why it goes yellowy pink rather than looking like proper blood. What I hadn't known is that the dressing is designed to hold a fair bit of it, so a patch UNDER the dressing is doing exactly what it's for. It's when it's coming out round the edges and soaking clothes that they want to see it sooner.

I did get a bit of a fright at my dressing change because the scar was a lot redder than I expected, a tramline of pink an inch either side, and the nurse said that's healing red not angry red and the angry kind spreads out from the wound day by day rather than sitting neatly along it. Also I had a numb patch below the scar the size of my hand that is still there over a year on, a bit smaller than it was, apparently that's a small skin nerve and it can take months or never fully come back.

#4Ms Priya RamanSurgical moderator(Joined Oct 2024 · 91 posts)June 23, 2026, 2:30 pm

Helen, the direct answer: what you have described, a small pale yellow or pink-tinged patch held within the dressing on day six, with no smell, no fever, pain that is improving, and skin around the dressing that looks normal, is the ordinary picture of early wound ooze and not the picture of infection. You are not the person who read the leaflet too carefully. You are the person the leaflet was written for, and it is not written very well.

Some background so the leaflet makes sense. After a hip replacement the wound produces fluid for the first few days: serous fluid from the healing tissue, a little old blood, and sometimes fluid from the joint itself. Together they look straw-coloured to pink, which is what you are seeing. Modern dressings are chosen to absorb it and to keep a waterproof seal, which is why teams increasingly leave one dressing in place for 7 to 14 days rather than changing it daily; every change is a chance to introduce bacteria. Ooze that is present on days two to five and tailing off by about the end of the first week is expected. Ooze that is still going, or increasing, beyond about 7 days is what surgical teams want to know about, because persistent drainage is one of the recognised early signs that a wound is not settling, and prolonged leakage is associated with a higher risk of deep infection. Deep infection itself is uncommon, about 1 in 100 hip replacements, and it is taken seriously precisely because it can need further surgery.

The pattern that does need a same-day call is different from yours in shape: redness spreading outward from the wound rather than sitting along it, the skin becoming hot to touch, discharge that becomes thicker, cloudy, or offensive, pain in the wound that gets worse after it had been improving, a temperature above about 38 degrees, or feeling generally unwell with chills. Any one of those, at any hour, is a phone call to the ward or your surgical team rather than a forum. Two other points from this thread are correct and worth keeping: a straight line of pink along the incision is healing, and a numb patch of skin beside or below the scar is a small cutaneous nerve that has been disturbed and commonly takes months to recover, sometimes incompletely.

What I would do with a patch that has grown from a 5p to a 50p over an afternoon on day six: leave the dressing sealed, do not lift the edge to look, keep it dry, and telephone the ward or the clinic in the morning to describe it, so they can decide whether to bring the dressing change forward. If it comes out past the edge of the dressing overnight, ring then. I cannot see your wound from here, so if anything I have listed above appears, the list beats my reassurance. The wider account of what can go wrong after this operation, and how uncommon most of it is, is in hip replacement risks and complications, and the plain account of the operation itself, from the table to the first walk, is in what a hip replacement actually involves.

#5Helen W.(Joined Apr 2026 · 11 posts)June 30, 2026, 5:55 pm

Update, one week later. Rang the ward first thing after Ms Raman's post and the nurse said almost exactly the same, sealed dressing doing its job, ring back if it reaches the edge. It didn't. It stopped growing by day eight and had gone crusty by the time they took the dressing off yesterday, which was day thirteen, and the scar underneath was a neat pink line with the clips out and no drama at all.

The nurse did say that if I'd been on day ten with a growing patch it would have been a different phone call, so the day number matters as much as the patch. Also I have the numb patch pbike described, hand sized, below the scar. Nobody mentioned that one either.