New Center Offers Advanced Treatment for Patients with Slow-healing Wounds

Alexian Brothers Hospital Network has opened a wound care center that offers state-of-the-art treatment for diabetics with foot ulcers and for other patients with slow-healing wounds. The Alexian Wound Healing Center uses evidence-based algorithms, or proven, step-by-step procedures, modified as necessary to fit the unique needs of each patient.

Located in the Niehoff Pavilion on the campus of Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village, Ill., the center also features two hyperbaric oxygen chambers that promotes wound healing by enriching the blood with oxygen unleashing the healing power of the red blood cells. The center's staff includes three nurses who are certified wound specialists, a hyperbaric oxygen technician, and eight physicians, including three general surgeons, three podiatrists, a plastic surgeon, an infectious disease specialist and a physiatrist. The entire staff has attended wound-care and hyperbaric-treatment training at Ohio State University.

Diabetic foot ulcers are the most common wounds treated at the wound center followed by venous stasis ulcers.  Venous stasis ulcers typically appear in the lower legs caused by venous insufficiency, venous hypertension, varicose veins and lymphedema, says Mary Pat Lyons RN CWS CNC Executive Director.

The center, which opened May 2005, treats all patients on an outpatient basis, coordinating their care closely with their primary-care physician, inpatient wound nurses at ABMC and St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates, Ill., and home-care nurses.

"Our goal is to have continuity of care," says Lyons, a certified wound specialist and clinical nurse consultant.

With the addition of a physiatrist to the center's staff this fall, the center also will be coordinating patient care with Alexian Rehabilitation Hospital in Elk Grove Village. Although doctors often refer patients to the center, patients can also self refer. When patients visit the center for the first time, patients are given thorough exams including history/physical, review of medications and vascular studies and TCOM monitoring. They undergo blood-flow tests, including an EKG-like screening procedure known as transcutaneous oxygen monitoring. If a patient has a circulation problem that is causing inadequate blood flow to a wound, the center informs the patient's primary-care physician and asks the physician to refer the patient to a vascular specialist to correct the problem.

Wounds require adequate circulation to be able to heal.

Once circulation problems have been addressed, patients can begin receiving wound care regularly at the center. This care includes topical treatment and dressing of the wound, in accordance with the evidence-based algorithms, and can be combined with daily hyperbaric treatment for weeks at a time. Patients breathe 100 percent oxygen in the hyperbaric chambers, alternating with regular room air at defined intervals. The treatment enriches the blood with oxygen, unleashing the healing power of red blood cells.

Although exposing wounds to 100 percent oxygen under pressure inside the hyperbaric chamber also has healing benefits, "our focus isn't necessarily the outside of the wound," says Kevin Flynn, Hyperbaric Oxygen Technician and an Emergency Medical Technician. "We want to get the oxygen into the blood. We want to give a good oxygen base for the topical medications." Patients who have struggled with wounds for months or years often see dramatic improvement through the combination of topical and hyperbaric treatment.

"After a couple of weeks of treatment, patients in the waiting room are smiling," Flynn says. "They're happy. They say, ‘Finally, I'm getting good closure, good healing.'"