Wound Healing Center & Hyperbaric Medicine

What is wound care?

A major emphasis of the center is outpatient wound care and follow-up to reduce wound deterioration and to promote wound healing. When the body’s natural healing process is delayed or hindered by medical conditions such as diabetes or vascular disease, the wound becomes an ongoing problem.

There are two sets of factors that can impede the healing process-local and broader. Local factors that interfere with the healing process include pressure; a dry environment (wounds kept in a moist environment heal three to five times faster, with less pain, than those exposed to a dry environment); trauma and tissue swelling; infection; inability to control bowel and bladder function; and local tissue death.

Broader systemic factors can also impede healing at a wound site. These include age, body build, chronic disease such as diabetes or renal failure, nutritional status, poor circulation, insufficient blood supply, suppressed immune system, and radiation therapy.

The aging process increases everyone's risk of developing a chronic, non-healing wound. A history of smoking, poor dietary habits such as a high fat diet, and obesity can increase a person's risk of developing a non-healing wound as these habits affect the body’s circulatory system. A family history of ‘circulation problems’ may also be a warning sign. Poor eating habits that lead to nutritional insufficiencies, not uncommon in the elderly, can contribute to the development and poor healing of wounds. Chronic conditions such as hypertension, renal disease, peripheral vascular disease, and diabetes increase a person's risk factors as well.

People with diabetes mellitus are particularly prone to developing non-healing wounds and are at greater risk of developing complications from those wounds if not properly treated. More than 50 percent of patients seen in some wound healing centers have a diabetes-related chronic, non-healing wound.

Diabetes is a condition where the body cannot use blood sugar effectively. People with type 1 diabetes, usually developed when they are younger, must take insulin injections daily to control their blood glucose. People with Type 2 diabetes, which accounts for about 85 percent of the people in the United States who have diabetes, as a rule develop the disease when they are older. People with Type 2 diabetes can usually control their disease with diet or oral medication; sometimes insulin is required.

Having either type of diabetes which is not well controlled leads not only to decreased blood circulation in the lower extremities, but also affects the nervous system so even if a wound develops, because of poor fitting shoes for example, the person may not feel the wound.

The increased blood sugar levels also increase the risk of infections at the wound site, which can lead to gangrene. Aggressive treatment of these wounds, in a wound healing center such as the one at the Bronson Battle Creek, can significantly decrease a person's risk of having their foot or leg amputated.

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