Electrical Stimulation Treatment for Chronic Wounds

1. Electrical Stimulation Treatment for Chronic Wounds Hard-to-heal wounds are a clinical challenge for physicians across the world. When wounds fail to heal, they become chronic and remain open for longer than six weeks. It is very important to address chronic wounds to ensure quality wound care. Researchers from the University of Manchester found that electrical stimulation (ES) treatment is very effective to expedite the healing process and prevent chronic wound formation. Angiogenesis or the formation of new capillaries from pre-existing blood vessels is critical for the wound healing process. Insufficient angiogenesis lead to impaired wound healing and chronic wound formation. This new research found that treatment with ES resulted in increased angiogenesis that facilitated wound healing. The researchers carried out a unique human volunteer study of skin wound healing in 40 individuals. Harmless wounds of half-centimeter were created on each upper arm of the volunteers. While one wound was left for normal healing, the other one was treated with electrical pulses over a period of two weeks. These pulses stimulated angiogenesis and organized blood vessel formation. ES treatment resulted in a reduction in wound volume, diameter and surface area and an increase in blood flow to the damaged area to accelerate acute cutaneous wound healing. The blood flow increased significantly on days 10 and 14 following the application of electrical pulses while these pulses significantly up-regulated angiogenesis and down-regulated inflammation on day 14. www.woundemr.com 855-968-6394

2. According to the University press release, the researchers are to work with a leading bioelectronics company to develop and evaluate devices and dressings that use electrical stimulation techniques to stimulate the body’s nervous system to generate nerve impulses to the skin repair site. The principal investigator of the study says the electrical stimulation technology has the potential to be applied to any situation where faster healing is mostly desirable such as after the surgical wounds, accidental or military trauma and in sport injuries. He also added that with this technology, wound dressings will have a significant role in healing wounds and getting patients back to health as quickly as possible. Accurate Wound Documentation Critical for Faster Healing If you really want to benefit from the new technology and heal wounds faster, accurate wound documentation is very critical. Holistic assessment of the patient with wounds is important for the wound  care process since a number of local and systemic factors can delay or impair healing such as malnutrition, medication, obesity, psychological stress and so on. A complete documentation of patient history and other complications let physicians keep tabs on these factors and perform the assessment more effectively. Physicians also need to consider three phases of wound healing –  inflammatory, proliferative and maturation to identify any further complications and ensure proper healing. Documentation of wound healing status can help physicians do this job more effectively. Accurate wound assessment documentation is also very important for an  effective treatment plan – application of fluid for wound cleansing, selecting the most appropriate type of dressing and management of complications. www.woundemr.com 855-968-6394

3. When it comes to paper-based documents or general EMR, there is a huge amount of patient data and it will take considerable time for both physicians and nurses to filter out wound data they urgently need. This will cause delay in determining the appropriate treatment plan and eventually impair wound healing. WoundEMR supports wound-specific templates so that wound care physicians and nurses can quickly enter and retrieve their data. This will speed up their job and finally result in better provision of care and better wound healing. Wound EMR supported with an interface for physicians and nurses can further improve the speed of data exchange. www.woundemr.com 855-968-6394