Wound Care Technology

After attending the Spring Symposium for Advanced Wound Care and hearing many great lectures, I got to thinking, “What are the pillars of chronic wound care?” We have all heard of the concept “look at the whole patient and not the hole in the patient.” Heck, I have even written about it. But we also need to have a good foundation for how to implement this phrase or where to even start. I did a quick Internet search and came up with some interesting articles that talked about the basics of wound care and management. I found discussions on everything from maintaining a moist wound environment to being financially responsible. All of this information leads me to the concept of developing easy-to-understand pillars or categories to consider when caring for a patient with a chronic wound.

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in health care is gaining significant attention and interest. AI is revolutionizing how providers diagnose, treat, and care for patients, but how did we get here? The origins of AI in health care and its development are essential to understanding its applications today. Knowledge of key advancements in AI and what the future holds for its use in wound care is vital to consider for any level of integration into one’s practice.

Tracey Rickards, BN, RN, MN, PhD Chris Boodo, MIMOSA Diagnostics In this interview, Dr. Tracey Rickards and Chris Boodo discuss the concept of aging in wound care as well as the benefits remote patient monitoring offer to facilitate care to aging populations that may struggle to see care, such as immobile patients and those who live in rural areas.

Hospitalized patients of all ages are at risk for iatrogenic injuries. Peripheral intravenous extravasation and infiltration (PIVIE) injuries are one of the most common types of hospital-acquired injury, with the potential to cause long-term disfigurement or loss of function. While the administration of fluids and medications through intravenous catheters is a common practice in the hospital, it is not without significant risk if fluids leak from the vasculature into surrounding tissues. Depending on the type and amount of fluid that enters the tissue, varying degrees of tissue damage may result. The pathophysiology of this tissue damage may also vary.

Although the potential benefits of AI in health care have been widely theorized, the practical and ethical concerns have been less well-characterized. Discussed below are important considerations involving patient privacy (ie, HIPAA concerns) as well as the ethical use of AI in daily clinical practice.

The benefit of Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) as an “active,” adjunctive treatment is well-established. Evidence has shown that wounds treated with negative pressure granulate faster than wounds managed with traditional dressings. There is ever-increasing literature to support the use of NPWT to treat wounds effectively and safely in even the youngest patients.1 Some specific benefits of NPWT for pediatric and adolescent patients include decreased frequency of dressing changes, as well as a dressing that is occlusive and unlikely to be removed by the patient.

Pain is an important factor when performing wound care procedures, especially dressing changes, which account for moderate to severe pain in 74% of wound care patients. Traditional pain management methods commonly employed, such as opioids, may not always produce a desirable result or be effective due to potential side effects, addiction risk, and delayed wound healing.

Jobs in the field of medicine are notoriously demanding. However, many factors are converging to exacerbate this problem, and clinician burnout poses a large threat to the health care system in the United States. Unfortunately, this problem does not impact a single segment of specialists but is systemic at many health care facilities.

By Karen Lou Kennedy-Evans, RN, FNP, APRN-BC, and Leslie Ritter, PhD, RN Recently, WoundSource had the opportunity to talk with Karen Lou Kennedy-Evans, RN, FNP, APRN-BC, and Leslie Ritter, PhD, RN, via email about their presentation, “Thermographic Imaging of Terminal Skin Changes," for the NPIAP Spring 2023 Conference, which took place in San Diego, California, March 18, 2023. In this presentation, the authors state that the appearance of the Kennedy lesion (KL) and a deep tissue pressure injury (DTPI) are often similar, and, according to the speakers, it can cause a challenge for clinicians in their ability to make a visible determination of the wound. Thermographic imaging, they claim, can be used to measure and note changes in a patient’s skin at the end of their life.

Wound healing typically progresses through four phases: hemostasis, inflammation, cell proliferation or granulation and repair, and epithelialization and remodeling of scar tissue. Clinicians should achieve wound closure through a standardized framework such as the TIMERS (tissue management, infection or inflammation, moisture balance, edge or epithelialization, regeneration, and social factors) tool, which provides a comprehensive approach to wound management and optimizes the wound bed and conditions to support progression of wounds through the healing process.