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Compression Sock for Excessive Sitting or Standing

Wound Care Advisor
Helping Patients with Lymphedema

Success as an HME compression provider takes commitment, education and an understanding that there is more to compression beyond the feet.

The compression sock is an integral product to carry for any HME provider committed to using compression technology to help patients. Compression doesn’t even need to be required due a medical condition – it’s an almost universal need. Sitting or standing for excessive amounts of time can be terrible for your health, especially the feet. For example, sitting with your legs crossed beneath your chair can cause pressure that results in swollen ankles or varicose veins. And standing all day at work can cause issues from your neck all the way to your feet. (more…)

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Comprehensive turning programs can avoid a pain in the back

Wound Care Advisor

Turning programs are essential to prevent and promote healing of pressure ulcers and to prevent the many negative effects of immobility, ranging from constipation to respiratory infections. However, turning a patient often puts a caregiver’s body in an awkward position, which can lead to musculoskeletal damage, especially back injuries.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, healthcare workers suffer the highest rate of musculoskeletal disorders for all occupational groups and more than seven times the average rate for all occupations. Direct caregivers are the group most likely to experience musculoskeletal injuries. During turning tasks, excessive forces are imposed on the caregiver’s musculoskeletal structure due to the external load of the patient and the caregiver’s form and position during the task. Fragala and Fragala found that turning patients in bed is one of the highest-risk activities that lead to low back pain. (more…)

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Comprehensive skin assessment

Wound Care Advisor

By Nancy Morgan, RN, BSN, MBA, WOC, WCC, DWC, OMS

Each issue, Apple Bites brings you a tool you can apply in your daily practice. Here’s an overview of performing a comprehensive skin assessment.

In the healthcare setting, a comprehensive skin assessment is a process in which the entire skin of a patient is examined for abnormalities. It requires looking at and touching the skin from head to toe, with a particular emphasis on bony prominences and skin folds. Comprehensive skin assessment is repeated on a regular basis to determine whether changes in the skin’s condition have occurred. The goal of a skin assessment is to identify problem areas promptly for treatment and prevention. (more…)

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What is a comprehensive risk assessment?

Wound Care Advisor

By Jeri Lundgren, BSN, RN, PHN, CWS, CWCN

Prevention of pressure ulcers and skin breakdown begins with a comprehensive risk assessment. Most providers use a skin risk assessment tool, such as the Braden or Norton scale. While these tools have been validated to predict pressure ulcer development, their use alone isn’t considered a comprehensive assessment, and frequently the individual risk factors they identify aren’t carried through to the plan of care. (more…)

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Clinician Resources: On the Road Again, Nutrition, Compression

Wound Care Advisor

A variety of resources to end the year and take you into 2014.

On the road again

Give your patients with an ostomy this information from the Transportation Security Administration to help them navigate airport screening:

• You can be screened without having to empty or expose your ostomy, but you need to let the officer conducting the screening know about the ostomy before the screening starts.
• You can be screened using imaging technology, a metal detector, or a thorough patdown.
• Your ostomy is subject to additional screening. In most cases, this means you will pat down your ostomy and then your hands will undergo explosive trace detection. (more…)

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The long and short of it: Understanding compression bandaging

Wound Care Advisor

By Robyn Bjork, MPT, WCC, CWS, CLT-LANA

Margery Smith, age 82, arrives at your wound clinic for treatment of a shallow, painful ulcer on the lateral aspect of her right lower leg. On examination, you notice weeping and redness of both lower legs, 3+ pitting edema, several blisters, and considerable denude­ment of the periwound skin. She is wearing tennis shoes and her feet have relatively little edema, but her ankles are bulging over the edges of her shoes; both socks are wet. Stemmer’s sign is negative. The wound on the right leg is draining copious amounts of clear fluid; it’s dressed with an alginate, which is secured with conforming roll gauze. No signs or symptoms of infection are present. (more…)

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Compression therapy for chronic venous insufficiency, lower-leg ulcers, and secondary lymphedema

Wound Care Advisor

By Nancy Chatham, RN, MSN, ANP-BC, CCNS, CWOCN, CWS, and Lori Thomas, MS, OTR/L, CLT-LANA

An estimated 7 million people in the United States have venous disease, which can cause leg edema and ulcers. Approximately 2 to 3 million Americans suffer from secondary lymphedema. Marked by abnormal accumulation of protein-rich fluid in the interstitium, secondary lymphedema eventually can cause fibrosis and other tissue and skin changes. (more…)

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Could probiotics replace antibiotics in wound healing?

Wound Care Advisor
lactobacilli probiotics replace antibiotics wound healing

The microbiome is known to play a major role in gut health, but what about our skin? Billions of bacteria reside there, and the probiotic types may hold great potential to prevent infections during wound healing.

Our skin provides a natural barrier to the environment. This is crucial for our health, as skin protects us from invasive pathogens such as bacteria and viruses. (more…)

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Hope for first drug against lymphedema

Wound Care Advisor
lymphedema drug against breast cancer medicine wca

Many cancer patients, especially those who’ve undergone breast cancer treatment, experience painful, swollen limbs, a condition called lymphedema.

Now researchers say they’ve found an underlying mechanism that could eventually lead to the first drug therapy for the debilitating condition. (more…)

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Scientists Seek People with Primary Progressive MS and Other Forms of MS to Study Gut Bacteria

Wound Care Advisor
Volunteers are being sought for a major study to help determine how the gut microbiome can be used to treat multiple sclerosis, lupus, and other diseases.

Investigators at the University of California in San Francisco are recruiting people with MS for an international study of the gut microbiome – the population of bacteria in the gut – in MS. They are seeking people with primary progressive MS nationwide (there is no need for onsite visits), as well as people with any other type of MS who can make a one-time visit to San Francisco, New York, Boston or Pittsburgh. The overall purpose of these studies is to investigate the potential role of gut bacteria in MS.

Scientists Focus on Gut Flora for Future Treatments of Autoimmune Diseases

(more…)

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AlloFuse® Select CM Supports Your Patient’s Healing

Wound Care Advisor
ALLOFUSE® CORTICAL FIBERS & ALLOFUSE® FIBER BOAT

AlloFuse® Select CM – clinically proven to activate and support bone formation and can be used in a variety of spinal, neurologic, and orthopedic procedures.

AlloSource, one of the nation’s largest providers of cartilage, bone, skin, soft-tissue, and cellular allografts to advance patient healing in surgical procedures and wound care, today announced the release of AlloFuse® Select CM, a premium addition to AlloSource’s AlloFuse portfolio. (more…)

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