Wound Care Center
What is the Wound Care Center?
Eisenhower Wound Care Center provides specialized treatment for chronic or non-healing wounds, which are defined as sores or wounds than have not significantly improved from conventional treatments. Complex and non-healing wounds can negatively affect patients’ quality of life and disrupt daily activities. Not only are they painful – they can be extremely dangerous. When wounds persist, a specialized approach is required for healing.
For most people, cuts and scratches heal within a few days or weeks. However, at any given time, more than six million Americans suffer from chronic, non-healing wounds and that number is expected to grow at more than two percent for the next decade. The rising incidence is fueled by an aging population and increasing rates of diseases and conditions such as diabetes and obesity. Whether a wound is the result of radiation, traumatic injury, infection, disease (such as diabetes), or another condition, it requires timely and effective care.
Team Approach
Collaboration of care between our experienced providers and multiple specialties has been found to be the best way to treat slow or poorly healing wounds. Care begins with the nursing staff at our center who have years of experience treating wounds. Our nurses assist in patient education, nutrition evaluation and direct treatments of the wounds. Our providers perform thorough evaluation of each patient in order to pinpoint each patient’s needs. We coordinate care with patient’s primary and specialty doctors and make referrals and consultations where necessary. We work with specialists in plastic surgery, vascular surgery, podiatric surgery, as well as rheumatology and infectious disease. We also utilize physical therapy and prosthetists/orthotists after healing for rehab and to prevent further wounds. This interdisciplinary model of care ensures the most comprehensive treatment for each patient.
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Advanced Treatments for All Types of Wounds
With state-of-the-art treatments available, people with non-healing and chronic wounds now have a place to turn. We have specialized wound equipment and provide the full spectrum of care and support for every patient using a comprehensive range of interventions and tests, such as:
- Bioengineered skin substitutes: using advanced tissues that stimulate wound healing.
- Dietary and nutrition consultations: Adequate nutrition is important for the body’s own ability to heal wounds. A lack of essential nutrients can delay wound healing.
- Hyperbaric oxygen therapy: A treatment where a patient is immersed in pure oxygen in a specialized chamber in order for the blood oxygen level to increase and promote wound healing. Eisenhower Wound Care Center features two state-of-the-art mono-place hyperbaric chambers.
- Surgical debridements: Removal of dead or non-viable tissue from the wound will help to prevent infection and allow healing.
- Plastic surgery consultations: Tissue transfer procedures, such as skin grafts, are sometimes necessary in order to achieve healing for large or very deep wounds.
- Specialized dressings and therapies, such as gels, collagen, foams, growth factors, and other materials that promote wound healing.
- Transcutaneous oxygen testing, which tells physicians whether the tissues surrounding a wound are getting enough oxygen
- Vascular surgery consultations to help restore blood flow and promote healing.
- Custom offloading devices and compression therapy: Placement of these devices can assist to control swelling and to offload wounds that are traumatized by normal walking.
Conditions treated at Eisenhower Wound Center
We offer evaluation and personalized care for a variety of complex and nonhealing wounds, such as:
- Arterial and venous wounds
- Atypical ulcers such as pyoderma gangrenosum, calciphylaxis, hidradenitis suppurativa, bulbous pemphigoid, and vasculopathies
- Burns
- Abdominal wounds
- Diabetic ulcers
- Extremity wounds with edema or lymphedema
- Gangrene or tissue death
- Mohs surgery nonhealing wounds
- Nonhealing surgical wounds
- Ostomy and fistula care
- Pressure injuries
- Radiation wounds
- Skin tears
- Surgical incisions
- Traumatic injury wounds
- Venous ulcers
- Wounds occurring after cancer treatments
Diabetes
We commonly treat patients with wounds related to diabetes. More than 29 million people (12% of adults in the US) have diabetes in the United States and more than two million of those people annually will develop a diabetic foot ulcer or other non-healing wound. Advanced wound care aims to prevent amputations and heal patients in a faster and more cost effective way. People with diabetes comprise one of the largest groups of wound care patients for multiple reasons. The disease itself creates a series of maladies that make the feet and legs susceptible to trauma with a diminished ability to heal. People with diabetes are more susceptible to infection, are plagued by poor circulation and frequently have neuropathy.
Diabetics with a wound or ulcer require prompt and aggressive treatment, particularly when amputation is a possibility. Our team of experts not only provides leading-edge treatment for diabetes-related wounds but can also perform surgery to prevent ulcerations, correct deformities and to save limbs.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatments
For wounds that will not heal through traditional treatments and a number of other conditions, hyperbaric oxygen therapy can help. The Eisenhower Wound Center is proud to offer two state-of-the-art mono-place hyperbaric chambers. This treatment consists of breathing 100 percent oxygen at two to three times the normal atmospheric pressure in a pressurized chamber. This results in an increase in oxygen in the blood and the body’s tissues.
This increased oxygen:
- Encourages the formation of new blood vessels
- Stimulates cells to help promote healing
- Enhances the ability of white blood cells to kill bacteria
Use of this therapy and other treatments can possibly save a limb from needing amputation.
Used to treat a variety of diagnoses, including:
- Acute limb ischemia (inadequate blood flow and oxygen to a specific part of the body)
- Chronic bone infections
- Delayed radiation injuries (including wounds, bleeding, necrosis, and other conditions)
- Compromised skin grafts or flaps
- Diabetic foot ulcers
- Acute skin necrosis
- Severe anemia, when blood transfusion is impossible due to religious or medical issues
- Sudden sensorineural hearing loss
- Carbon monoxide poisoning
Our providers will determine if this therapy is indicated in your treatment plan.