Alternative Wound Therapy (Nursing)

00:04 Let's take a look at some alternative wound therapies that you may run into in your clinical practice.

00:11 So we're talking about therapies, what therapies can be used for extensive or hard to heal wounds? So here's a few that we are going to discuss today.

00:28 So if you take a look at this image, we're going to talk about each one of these.

00:32 All look a little bit minimal, too invasive here.

00:35 But these are common treatments that's going to be used for your patient's plan of care.

00:40 So let's take a look at this first type of treatment here.

00:43 This is called vacuum-assisted wound care.

00:46 Many times you're going to see this in your clinical setting.

00:49 And we call this typically a wound vac, for example.

00:52 So here's why we do it, there is a vacuum component or a suction component to this treatment.

00:58 Now want you to take a look at this image here.

01:00 If you see here at the bottom, this dressing foam, the black piece, this is kind of an odd concept, but it truly is like a black dense foam.

01:10 We're going to take this and cut this to the size of the wound and will set inside the wound.

01:16 So this will set in here kind of like a filter, it'll help pull extra fluid through it.

01:22 And that's going to go to the pump itself.

01:24 So we put the dressing foam in the wound, then we're going to seal it with like a thin, clear adhesive dressing called the film seal.

01:34 And all of that will attach to the vacuum pump itself.

01:38 Just know on the pump, there's various settings that the wound care doctor or the physician may order for your patient.

01:45 So the vacuum pump is going to provide a suction and help pull all extra fluid.

01:51 And that's going to go through the pump into a collection canister.

01:55 So let's talk about all the advantages of this wound vac.

01:59 So we kind of talked about this that it gently pulls fluid from the wound over time.

02:04 By doing this, it's going to help remove any extra debris, it also help remove swelling, and that's going to promote healing for our patients.

02:13 Now the really important point of this wound vac is many times we want good healthy blood which is oxygen rich going to those tissues so we can heal.

02:24 So this can help perfusion of the tissue itself.

02:28 It's also due to the section going to help close that wound and pull in those wound edges.

02:34 And again, it may help stimulate the growth of new tissue to help that wound close.

02:40 So let's take a look at some of these live images here.

02:43 You can see that that dressing foam can be of various sizes.

02:48 It's also going to just depend on how big big that wound is.

02:52 You can see here on one side of the screen how long that dressing foam can be.

02:57 Or the other side of the screen, it looks much smaller.

03:01 But that wound is actually probably very deep.

03:04 So also when you look at the screen here, you can see there's that film, there's also the suction device that goes on top and leads to the pump.

03:12 So these are some great examples of wound vacs or vacuum-assisted wound care.

03:18 Now let's take a look at this piece of equipment, right? This looks pretty cumbersome like a teleportation device, maybe.

03:26 But this is actually a special chamber that they use.

03:30 It's going to help increase oxygen to those tissues to help wounds heal faster.

03:36 Now this is going to be for very complex wounds, this is not going to be for your everyday wound treatment.

03:43 So this is going to be used for really bad gangrenous wounds, diabetic ulcers, really difficult to treat wounds and some infections.

03:53 So there's a lot of caveats to hyperbaric wound treatment.

03:58 The patient's got to be screened appropriately, set up a plan of care for this and monitor really closely by a physician and a team.

04:06 And lastly, these look much less invasive than some of the other treatments that we've just talked about.

04:12 So these are compression stockings or bandages.

04:16 So sometimes compression stockings can come either thigh high or knee high or sometimes we'll even use wraps.

04:22 So the reason why these are so important, you get compression from these devices.

04:27 They're going to help improve circulation, improve your wound healing.

04:31 And these for patients with venous disease and venous wounds.

04:35 By using these compressions, it's going to reduce swelling and promote better circulation.

04:41 Thanks for watching.