If you’re one of the 6.7 million Americans living with a chronic wound, you may well be referred to a wound care specialist for treatment. In this article, we’ll explore when you should see a wound care specialist, why proper wound care is so vitally important, and how specialist treatment can reduce the risk of complications and encourage a speedy recovery.
Topics: Wound Care
Along with your primary care physician and endocrinologist, wound care specialists are an integral part of your healthcare team if you have diabetes. While you may not consider wounds of primary concern, the prevalence of foot ulcers is very high for those with diabetes. An estimated 19 to 34% of adults with diabetes will develop a foot ulcer during the course of their lifetime, and a large percentage of these ulcers will become infected and require amputation.
Prevention, early intervention, and specialized wound care can help reduce the incidence of infection and amputation related to diabetes. Wound care specialists have specific skills to help you prevent wounds from developing and worsening.
Diabetic wound care requires a specialized approach for a number of reasons. Let’s examine the top four reasons so that you can ensure that you or your loved ones can seek the best possible outcome for diabetic wound care.
Topics: Wound Care
Stasis ulcers, sometimes called venous skin ulcers, affect almost 1% of Americans. These wounds usually occur on the lower legs, especially around the ankles. They can be extremely painful and are very slow to heal, taking an average of six to 12 months to close completely. Worse still, for 70% of patients, ulcers will recur within five years of closure.
Topics: Wound Care
If you have an open wound, bedsore, burn, or ulcer after surgery or a medical complication, your doctor may provide a referral for a wound care center. A wound care center provides targeted services to help your wound heal and reduce the pain associated with it. The complex nature of wound care requires specialized medical attention, especially when associated with chronic health conditions like:
These medical conditions can slow healing time, decrease blood flow, or cause nerve damage that requires skilled attention. Your wound care specialist should have special training in addressing wounds associated with these conditions.
Topics: Wound Care
A wound care center is a specialist medical treatment center that deals with wounds that won’t heal. Wound care center staff may include specially certified doctors, nurses, and physical therapists that can help manage and heal problematic wounds. These healthcare providers will coordinate treatment with your personal physician to make sure that you get the best care possible.
Topics: Wound Care, Inpatient Rehab
If you're in the hospital for rehabilitation and you have an ulcer, bed sore, or surgical wound, you may have been assigned a wound care specialist. A wound care specialist is a healthcare provider with advanced training in assessing, dressing, and caring for open, non-healing wounds.
Topics: Wound Care, Inpatient Rehab
Ulcers are areas in which the skin has eroded, creating an open wound. They are often round and crater-like, may leak fluid or blood, and the skin around the ulcer may be red, inflamed, tender to the touch, and in some cases, very painful. Ulcers may affect just the surface layers of skin, or they can extend deep into the underlying dermal layers or even into the fat layer beneath the skin. The most common types of skin ulcers are stasis ulcers and pressure ulcers.
Topics: Wound Care
If you have had surgery, good surgical wound care is important to ensure proper healing and recovery, prevention of excess scarring, and protection against infections and other complications. Once you are discharged from the hospital, the responsibility for that care will rest primarily on your shoulders and will include caring for the incision, cleaning the wound, changing dressings, applying any prescribed topical treatments, taking antibiotics or other medications as directed, and monitoring the wound for signs of infection.
Topics: Wound Care
Wound management is a critical part of the healing process, and education is key to successful wound care. Training caregivers in the proper care procedures, under the guidance of a health care professional should always be the first action taken. Dressings applied incorrectly will only prolong healing and could lead to further tissue damage.
Topics: Wound Care
