Venous Ulcers
Time heals all wounds. But not this one. Not yet - Marie Lu, Champion

image by: ConvaTec Inc
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Dr. Unna's Boot - Miracle Cure
Something so basic as a dressing can be a miracle cure. The Unna's Boot is a bit of a misnomer and causes considerable confusion when ordering it in the hospital. It is not a boot, but it is of Unna's invention. The dressing is a linen gauze steeped usually in Zinc Oxide paste. It has the property of slowly shrinking as it dries and the Zinc Oxide is bacteriostatic. Calamine is added to reduce itching.
The venous ulcer is the final outcome of untreated venous insufficiency. The veins are passive vessels and require walking to pump blood up against gravity -valves spaced about 5-10cm apart break up the hydrostatic blood column into manageable bits. When the valves become dysfunctional…
Resources
DuoDERM® Extra Thin Dressing
DuoDERM® Extra Thin dressing is a hydrocolloid dressing indicated for the management of lightly exuding wounds. It combines a unique ConvaTec hydrocolloid formulation that distinguishes it from other hydrocolloid dressings and a vapor-permeable outer film to provide an occlusive moist environment.
Cochrane review - Hyperbaric oxygen therapy for treating chronic wounds
In people with foot ulcers due to diabetes, HBOT significantly improved the ulcers healed in the short term but not the long term and the trials had various flaws in design and/or reporting that means we are not confident in the results. More trials are needed to properly evaluate HBOT in people with chronic wounds; these trials must be adequately powered and designed to minimise all kinds of bias.
Causes and Treatment of Venous Insufficiency Ulcers
•Healing time for venous insufficiency ulcers averages 24 weeks •Approximately 15% of these ulcers will never heal •In 15 to 71% of cases of venous insufficiency ulcers, the ulcers represent a recurrent lesion •It is estimated that the cost of treating venous insufficiency ulcers is 1 to 5 billion dollars every year.
Challenges in the Treatment of Chronic Wounds
Chronic wounds include, but are not limited, to diabetic foot ulcers, venous leg ulcers, and pressure ulcers. They are a challenge to wound care professionals and consume a great deal of healthcare resources around the globe. This review discusses the pathophysiology of complex chronic wounds and the means and modalities currently available to achieve healing in such patients.
DOMINATE Wounds
The purpose of this manuscript is to describe an empirically developed wound care management system that has been successfully implemented and to provide evidence-based rationale for each of its components. The elements are provided in the acronym DOMINATE and can be applied in most wound scenarios as a checklist to ensure that measures of proven efficacy are being used to encourage healing, which involves the orderly progression through 4 phases: hemostasis, inflammation, proliferation (repair), and maturation (remodeling).
Evaluating the effectiveness of the customized Unna boot when treating patients with venous ulcers*
The use of the customized Unna boot contributes to quicker healing. However, over a period of three months the simple bandage applications were seen to be just as effective as the Unna boot method.
Everything You Need to Know About Venous Stasis Ulcers
As a symptom of venous disorder, venous stasis ulcers often accompany other symptoms such as varicose veins (twisted, swollen veins on the skin’s surface), hyperpigmentation (discoloration or darkening of the skin), and lipodermatosclerosis (thickening of the skin).
How To Use VAC Therapy On Chronic Wounds
There are several benefits to using VAC therapy. A primary benefit is the often very impressive creation of rapid granulation tissue over osseous and tendon structures. When treating venous and diabetic foot ulcers, this modality is beneficial for its ability to increase local vascularity and decrease chronic inflammatory exudates and non-viable tissue.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: Does It Really Help Non-Healing Wounds?
If you’re experiencing difficulty recovering from an ulcer or lesion, it may be time to consider this technique as a potential solution to non-healing wounds alongside wound dressings.
Keys To Treating Venous Leg Ulcerations
Venous leg ulcers are a severe outcome of chronic venous insufficiency, making it crucial to have an appropriate treatment plan. These authors highlight their three-pronged approach to treating venous leg ulcerations, emphasizing assessment of the ulcer, compression techniques and educating patients.
Managing Venous Insufficiency and Venous 'Stasis' Ulcers
The mainstay of treatment is to counteract the increased venous pressure through the use of compression stockings or dressings. Hyperbaric oxygen is not useful or indicated for venous stasis disease, except in rare cases where a surgeon uses a human skin graft.
Negative pressure wound therapy
Negative pressure wound therapy refers to wound dressing systems that continuously or intermittently apply subatmospheric pressure to the surface of a wound to assist healing. Negative-pressure wound therapy is also called vacuum-assisted wound closure (VAC) therapy, It has become a popular treatment modality for the management of many acute and chronic wounds.
The Problem With Men (And Their Veins)
Anyone can suffer from thread or varicose veins- nearly half of women and a quarter of men will experience symptoms in their lives. The difference between the sexes, though, is that women seek out treatment. Men typically don't: or at least not until it's too late.
Unna Boot Compression Therapy For Wounds
An Unna Boot consists of a 4-inch wide commercially prepared gauze bandage impregnated with zinc oxide and (sometimes) calamine. It is wrapped without compression around the lower leg starting about an inch above the toes and ending just below the knee and then flattened and contoured to the leg and foot, like a cast. This is covered by a flexible protective dressing wrap, such as Kerlix, and finally a compression layer, either Coban — an elasticized wrap applied with 50 percent compression, or a medical compression stocking of some type. The Unna Boot is changed every three to seven days.
Venous ulcers of the lower limb: Where do we stand?
Venous ulcers are the most common ulcers of the lower limb. It has a high morbidity and results in economic strain both at a personal and at a state level. Chronic venous hypertension either due to primary or secondary venous disease with perforator paucity, destruction or incompetence resulting in reflux is the underlying pathology, but inflammatory reactions mediated through leucocytes, platelet adhesion, formation of pericapillary fibrin cuff, growth factors and macromolecules trapped in tissue result in tissue hypoxia, cell death and ulceration.
What is Wound Care?
You'd probably like to do something soon because waiting can mean infection ... or worse! You might not be aware but Wound Care Advantage has been quietly healing stubborn wounds for well over a decade. By using the most advanced technology like hyperbaric therapy, debridements, and venous ablation, we heel non-healing wounds in less than six weeks.
Dr. Unna's Boot - Miracle Cure
Something so basic as a dressing can be a miracle cure. The Unna's Boot is a bit of a misnomer and causes considerable confusion when ordering it in the hospital. It is not a boot, but it is of Unna's invention. The dressing is a linen gauze steeped usually in Zinc Oxide paste. It has the property of slowly shrinking as it dries and the Zinc Oxide is bacteriostatic. Calamine is added to reduce itching.
VacTherapy
A Randomized Controlled Trial, in which V.A.C. Therapy was compared to standard moist wound treatment, showed healing time of Chronic Leg Ulcers could be reduced by 35% when V.A.C. Therapy was applied.2
Vacuum-Assisted Closure Therapy
The portable VAC system has made wound treatment possible in a home care setting, a development that improves quality of life and reduces hospitalization time.
Wound Care Advantage
We combined industry experts with the resources you need to run a wound center, all from our exciting cloud-based management platform called Luvo.
Wound Vac
Extensive reference for vacuum-assisted wound closure (VAC) therapy.
HyperbaricLink
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is an effective adjunct to traditional wound care therapies, including topical cleaning; surgical removal (debridement) of dead skin and tissue; application of dressings, ointments, and biologics; and use of compression boots or stockings, vacuum or negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) pumps, ultrasound, laser, and other emerging technologies. HBOT helps repair wounds and enhance healing by improving blood circulation, encouraging the formation of new capillary blood vessels (angiogenesis), supplying more oxygen to tissue in the wound bed, and stimulating the growth and distribution of stem cells.
Patient
Venous ulcers are caused by incompetent valves in the veins of the lower leg, especially in the perforators. These incompetent valves cause blood to be squeezed out into the superficial veins, when the calf muscles are contracted, instead of upwards towards the heart. Dilation of superficial veins occurs (varicosities) and the subsequent raised venous pressure results in oedema, venous eczema and ulceration.

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