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Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine

Article submitted by Baptist Hospital.
For more information, they can be reached at 615-284-4700.

The statistics are astonishing -more than 5 million Americans have chronic wounds, and more than 1 million new cases are diagnosed each year. With 17 million Americans - 6.2% of the population - suffering from diabetes, 15% of whom will have a non-healing ulcer at some point in their lives, it's clear that time does not heal all wounds.

That's where the Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine Center at Baptist Hospital comes in. It is a hospital-based, outpatient service, located on the first floor of the Baptist Rehabilitation Building. This physician-led wound management center offers multiple treatments for a wide variety of chronic non-healing wounds, including (in order of greatest treatment prevalence):

Wound Center physicians evaluate each patient thoroughly to identify the type of wound and its cause, and then work in conjunction with the referring physician and the patient to design a treatment plan. Throughout treatment, referring physicians receive information about the patient's healing outcomes.

The Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine Center at Baptist Hospital includes six exam rooms plus a suite equipped with three hyperbaric oxygen chambers, each with its own
TV/VCR and CD player for patients who wish to watch movies or listen to music during treatment.

For this therapy, which stimulates circulation and promotes healing, the patient is placed in the chamber with 100% oxygen under pressure, which quickly delivers high concentrations of oxygen to the bloodstream, accelerating the healing rate of wounds and stimulating angiogenesis. The average course of treatment lasts 30 consecutive days (excluding weekends), and each treatment lasts about two hours. The Center has had particularly good results with the treatment of soft tissue radionecrosis and osteoradionecrosis using hyperbaric therapy. Hyperbaric therapy is painless and does not require pain medication or sedation.

Patients with soft tissue radionecrosis, osteoradionecrosis, chronic refractory osteomyeltis, compromised skin grafts, or diabetic wounds of the lower
extremities are the best candidates for hyperbaric therapy.

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