Hyperbaric oxygen therapy can provide hope for consumers who need advanced care for wounds.
Texas Health Southwest recently opened two hyperbaric oxygen chambers in its Advanced Wound Care and Hyperbaric Center, enhancing the center’s ability to provide care for patients with chronic and non-healing wounds.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy increases the amount of oxygen in the patient’s blood. While lying in a clear acrylic chamber, patients receive 100 percent oxygen at pressures two to three times greater than normal. The high pressure causes the lungs and body tissues to absorb the oxygen in a shorter amount of time, in greater amounts than normal. This promotes wound healing, helps build new tissues and can improve organ function.
“The therapy shortens healing times for patients with complicated, problematic wounds,” said Kelly D. Grimes, D.O., board certified physician specialist in Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine on Texas Health Southwest’s medical staff and medical director of the Advanced Wound Care and Hyperbaric Center.
“Many of our patients are referred to us because they are facing potential loss of a limb due to ischemia — a decrease in the blood supply to the limb, gangrene and other causes. One of the primary goals of hyperbaric medicine in advanced wound care is limb salvage,” Dr. Grimes said. “With the hyperbaric chambers, we have the technology we need to help provide the most hope of avoiding amputation and further debilitation for our patients.”
The Advanced Wound Care and Hyperbaric Center provides a variety of advanced wound therapies, including primary services such as evaluation of chronic wounds, conventional and advanced wound dressings and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. After assessment every patient receives a personalized wound care management plan that may include hyperbaric therapy. Treatment may be brief or last for several weeks, depending on the diagnosis.
Hyperbaric treatments are supervised by Dr. Grimes, his nursing staff and a hyperbaric technician. The team has more than four decades combined experience in hyperbaric therapy. Dr. Grimes has overseen more than 21,000 hyperbaric treatments, primarily at Texas Health Fort Worth.
Texas Health Southwest’s Advanced Wound Care and Hyperbaric Center opened in January 2017 and has continued to expand access for wound care consumers who had previously been treated at Texas Health Fort Worth. Two more hyperbaric chambers are planned as the Center grows.
“It was very exciting to treat our first patient in the chamber,” said Shelby Nugent, R.N., CHRN, staff nurse and hyperbaric safety director in the Center. “We worked hard to get this part of our practice operational.”
The new service will add to the Center’s capability to treat chronic and non-healing wounds, said Dr. Grimes.
“We’re not just treating scrapes on knees. We’re helping to preserve functionality and quality of life for our patients.”
Shelby Nugent, R.N., CHRN, staff nurse in Texas Health Southwest’s Advanced
Wound Care and Hyperbaric Center, preps the Center’s first hyperbaric oxygen
therapy patient, James Perry.
by Andy Wilson • Posted September 10, 2018
