Selecting the Pouching System: Consider what kind of Output

There are pouches for fecal ostomies and for urinary ostomies.

The closed end fecal pouches are usually used by colostomy patients.  They can discard the pouch once or twice a day and the skin barrier, they can change every 3 to 5 days.  Colostomy patients may also benefit from using the drainable pouches when they are having diarrhea, example, diarrhea from chemotherapy.

Ileostomy patients usually use drainable fecal pouches because they empty their pouches about 6 times per day.

The urostomy pouches have spouts that patients can close and open to empty the liquid urine.  Most urostomy pouches are designed to have "chambers" in them that act as one-way valves to prevent the urine from refluxing back to the skin barrier, to the skin and to the ostomy.