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Comprehensive turning programs can avoid a pain in the back

April 12, 2016February 25, 2020 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…)

Comprehensive skin assessment

July 27, 2015February 25, 2020 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…)

What is a comprehensive risk assessment?

May 22, 2014February 25, 2020 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…)

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

August 23, 2017February 25, 2020 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

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AlloFuse® Select CM Supports Your Patient’s Healing

August 7, 2017February 25, 2020 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…)

Global wound care dressings industry illuminated by new report

August 1, 2017February 25, 2020 Wound Care Advisor

global wound care dressing industry report

Wound Care Dressings Market report provides details about production, revenue, gross margin, consumption value & volume, sale price, import and export, and forecast to 2022 Learn details of the Economical Impact, Development Trends and Growth Rate (2017-2022) (more…)

Control your claims: Pressure ulcer/wound care management

April 12, 2017February 25, 2020 Wound Care Advisor

One of many dreaded tags from a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Survey is F-Tag 314 — Pressure ulcers.

CMS writes, “Each resident must receive and the facility must provide the necessary care and services to attain or maintain the highest practicable physical, mental, and psychosocial well-being, in accordance with the comprehensive assessment and plan of care.” (more…)

Morrison Community Hospital offers specialized Wound Care

April 9, 2017February 25, 2020 Wound Care Advisor

Wound care is a specialized form of treatment that focuses on helping patients recover from all types of wounds, both acute and chronic (ongoing). The most common types of wounds are those that result from acute injuries, surgical procedures, diabetes, and pressure or bed sores. Wounds can also result from radiation procedures that are part of a treatment plan for cancer, and they can be a result of vascular disorders. (more…)

Revealing Advanced Wound Care Market Growth Factors

April 6, 2017February 25, 2020 Wound Care Advisor

At a time when governments are under pressure to reduce healthcare costs, the global advanced wound care market is growing, driven by an aging population and rising incidences of chronic wounds.

Advanced wound care products are typically used to manage complex wounds, including burns, chronic wounds and complex trauma and surgical wounds. Chronic and complex wounds represent one of the predominant challenges to global healthcare systems because they are hard to heal and expensive to treat. (more…)

Think a Patient Has Rights? They Left.

March 25, 2017February 25, 2020 Wound Care Advisor

by Dr. Michael Miller

There are few absolutes in my universe. I know that my youngest daughter will gleefully and with full malice (but humorously presented) find something to torment me about every time I see her; referrals from family practice docs arrive well marinated in multiple antibiotics with nary a diagnosis in sight (save for the ubiquitous “infection”); and that regardless of what I recommend, offer, beg, plead, or cajole, that the patient has the complete and total power to make their decisions regarding their care and who provides it. Unless they are deemed by multiple authorities to be incapable of making a decision, until the appropriate paperwork or an emergency situation exists mandating immediate lifesaving action, the ball bounces squarely in their court…or so I thought. (more…)

If All You Have is a Hammer, What Happens When You Run Out of Nails?

March 25, 2017February 25, 2020 Wound Care Advisor

by Dr. Michael Miller

Over the years of making house calls for wound care, I found that there was a real need for home based mental health and behavioral care, palliative care, podiatry and lots of other things. We cater to those who are home bound based on the classic definition involving the word “Taxing”. One of the more prevalent problems affecting all patients involves the nebulous but ubiquitous, nerve jangling, aptly named, “5th Vital Sign”, namely pain. As a part of my medical group, we have created a program that provides pain management not just to the home bound but all those whose lives and lifestyles are affected adversely by it. The program is a monument to government bureaucracy involving multiple layers of paperwork, mental health evaluations, testing of bodily fluids for both illegal and legal substances and then, the actual evaluation of the patient commences. After all hurdles are vetted and then jumped, then and only then does a prescription for the appropriate nostrum leave the pad. In wound care, we treat based on the etiology, the location, the related factors, the amounts of drainage, the surrounding tissues and so on, ad nauseum. Not surprisingly, in pain management, the scenario is much different. In wound care the mantra of the dabbler is see the hole, fill the hole. In pain management, the goal is to minimize pain to maximize functionality but the overriding questions are how this is accomplished. (more…)

Don’t Kid Yourself, Amputation Is Unquestionably A Failure

March 25, 2017February 25, 2020 Wound Care Advisor

by Dr. Michael Miller

I recently saw an ad for a pending lecture at a national conference that piqued my interest much like “deflate-gate”. The title of this lecture horrifically touted that Amputation need not be considered failure. As a full time wound care doc, I work to identify those conditions that place patients at risk of all consequences both limited and catastrophic. We use the catchy title of “Limb Preservation”. We start the process by engaging in the unusual behavior of making definitive diagnoses, then systematically address them in as comprehensive manner as possible. I am proud to tell you that while there are occasions in which a terminally damaged digit is lost, that we have rarely sacrificed the greater part of a foot and more, have had only 3 lower extremity amputations in the last 5 years on patients who’s care remained exclusively with us. Of course, when a patient for whom we have created and implemented a “Limb Pres” care plan is taken out of our system (usually via a hospitalization for a reason other then the lower extremity problem), the facility forces that be unfortunately but infrequently demonstrate their inadequacy and paranoia by gang-harangueing the patient and family. They are lambasted with lurid tales of the condition marching up the leg engulfing the foot, knee, torso, and brains much like a flesh-eating PacMan. The patient’s confidence now neutered has little chance against this persistent onslaught of inadequacy and so, much like the Queen song, “Another One Bites The Dust”. (more…)

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