Practice Innovations
The goal of wound healing is to reconstruct a tissue defect in the shortest period of time, resulting in the highest level of function with the lowest level of recurrence. Reconstruction requires a pathway that is different in every wound. Critical components of the pathway include: assess adequacy of oxygenation to heal the wound, debridement, selection of basic wound care dressings, usage of advanced wound care therapies when required, determination if a wound is healed and prevention of recurrence.
NIRS is an imaging technology that is utilized at point-of-care and can add critical information on tissue oxygenation and inflammation.
Methods:
The following areas were identified as areas that NIRS may add clinically valuable information.
Patients were studied to validate the usefulness of NIRS in each area. All patients received a standard history and physical exam and a basic wound assessment. One or more NIRS studies were performed to gain additional information during the course of treatment.
Results: A total of 200 studies were performed and reviewed over a 8 month period. Based on the analysis, the information obtained from the studies provided clinically useful information in each of the areas previously identified.
Additional areas of clinical utility were identified during the project. It was also observed that NIRS may show increased inflammation in pressure points. Additionally, NIRS showed promise in being used to assess suture lines and flaps in the operating room and in post-op clinic to identify areas at risk requiring advanced therapies such as NPWT or topical oxygenation.
Discussion:
NIRS is a beneficial point-of-care tool that measures tissue oxygenation and is a segregate marker for inflammation and can provide critical information in the pathway for the reconstruction of complex tissue defects.
Trademarked Items:
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