Advanced wound care center for chronic and nonhealing wounds

Most cuts and sores heal within a week or two. However, if you have a wound that lingers and won’t heal, you’re not alone. About 7 million Americans deal with chronic wounds like leg ulcers, bedsores and lacerations. In these cases, advanced wound care is needed to help you heal.

There could be many reasons your wound isn’t healing, including diabetes, kidney disease, circulatory issues, diet and age. At Amery Hospital & Clinic’s Wound Healing Center, we provide the specialized treatment needed to treat even the most complex wounds.

As a leader in chronic wound healing, we’re one of the only facilities in the Midwest that offers some of the most advanced wound care and treatment options, including hyperbaric oxygen therapy and negative pressure wound therapy. Many of our patients travel from other states to get the specialized help they need to finally heal from their wound.

Our expert team of wound healing specialists will work with you to create a personalized treatment plan that addresses your unique needs. No matter the wound, we’ve been able to help about 99%* of our patients fully recover.

There’s no reason for you to keep living with an open sore. Healing starts with your first appointment at our wound healing clinic.

Hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) therapy is a type of treatment where patients breathe 100% oxygen in an enclosed chamber. The hyperbaric chamber for wound healing is a clear cylinder where patients can lay back and relax. Our Wound Healing Center is part of the Healogics network of advanced wound care centers.

During each hyperbaric oxygen treatment session, you’ll be surrounded by 100% oxygen at a higher than normal atmospheric pressure. This increases the amount of oxygen in your blood, allowing red blood cells to pass more easily through the plasma into the wounds to heal them from the inside out. It’s typically used to treat such problems as diabetic ulcers, wounds from chronic venous insufficiency and other circulatory disorders, compromised skin grafts and bone infections.

Sessions usually last between 90 minutes and two hours. We do our best to keep you entertained and comfortable during your sessions at our wound care clinic. You can choose to listen to music or watch a movie on the TV mounted above the hyperbaric chamber.

Wound debridement is a minor surgical procedure where we remove unhealthy tissue from the wound. This clears dead skin, debris and infected cells from the wound to promote healthy skin growth and healing. In some cases, we’ll transfer healthy skin from another part of your body and place it over the affected area to help your body grow healthy skin over the wound. We’ll typically use local anesthesia to help keep you comfortable during this type of procedure.

A wound dressing is a type of cover you wear over your wound to keep it clean and protect it from the elements. Choosing the right type of dressing for your wound goes a long way to help it heal. Our team will work with you to determine the best way to dress your wound.

Skin substitutes are bioengineered materials that are used to cover wounds. We only use skin substitutes that closely resemble how human skin feels, looks and functions. Bioengineered skin substitutes can promote wound closing, reduce pain, speed up the healing process, and eliminate the need for surgical skin grafts.
In wound healing, skin substitutes can be used for patients with:

• Burns
• Diabetes-related foot wounds
• Nonhealing surgical incisions
• Venous leg wounds
• Other chronic wounds

Negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) is a mechanical wound treatment that uses controlled negative pressure to promote wound healing. This means that we use a vacuum-like device to remove fluids from your wound with suction. NPWT also stimulates the growth of new tissue and reduces the amount of bacteria in the wound.

During your care, our wound doctors will keep a close eye on your wound to make sure it’s responding to treatment as planned. We use the latest monitoring techniques to track your healing progress. These include:

This test records the level of oxygen available to your wound. The more oxygen your wound gets, the quicker it can heal. During this test, we’ll place a sensor on your skin that measures the oxygen in your blood.

This test uses an ultrasound to measure the blood flow available to bring nutrients and medicines to the wound. The better the blood flow is, the quicker your wound will heal.

The stages of wound healing can take different amounts of time that depend on several factors. But in general, if you notice that a wound hasn’t started to heal in two weeks, or if a wound hasn’t completely healed after six weeks, it’s time to get help with wound healing.

Your primary care doctor may be able to provide some suggestions, but a wound healing center will have more treatment options. Plus, the wound care specialists at these centers are specially trained to provide advanced care for chronic or nonhealing wounds.

Your first appointment will include a physical examination during which the wound specialist will document the size and appearance of your wound. This will help them determine what type of wound you have – and will also help track how you’re healing once you start treatment.

The wound specialist will ask you about your medical conditions, behaviors and habits to help uncover possible reasons why your wound won’t heal and to determine additional testing that you need.

Possible tests include:

• Blood or urine tests
• Imaging tests
• Vascular studies

The wound specialist will put together a personalized treatment plan based on what they learn from your first appointment and any testing you have.

No. You don’t need a referral to schedule an appointment at our advanced wound care center. Just call 715-268-0175 to make an appointment.