SIOUX CITY, Iowa — With a vast array of treatments and advanced technology, MercyOne Siouxland’s Advanced Wound Healing and Hyberbaric Center has several resources and services available for patients in need of wound care.
“If we can get better blood supply to a wound it really enhances our ability to heal wounds and preserve limbs and people walking and healthy overall,” said Dr. Paul Johnson, the medical director of the wound center and has seen numerous patients throughout the years, many of whom, have “sores and wounds on the toes feet or legs” which take up to three weeks to heal, on average.
“If the time extends out and you’re not healing, that’s where you would want to seek medical help,” said Johnson.
That’s where Dr. Chad Laurich comes in. He’s a Vascular Surgeon at Midlands Clinic and says his primary goal in patients, is to ensure healthy blood circulation, especially for diabetic patients.
“Diabetes really causes a lot of blockage in the arteries, it’s just like it causes neuropathy, causes vascular disease in kind of a bad pattern, where you get those small vessels into the knee down to the foot,” said Laurich.
But the center is equipped to deal with that with a simple procedure to restore blood flow to that area.
“Most of what we do these days is shave that blockage out. Depending how the blockage looks, and what kind of plaque is there. But after you’ve kind gotten a lot of that bulk or that blockage out , then we usually treat it with an angioplasty and then we kind of shave the big stuff out and we dilate it nicely with a balloon,” said Laurich.
This is just one aspect of wound care healing. Another option the Wound Care Center offers a Hyperbaric chamber which is used for three kinds of patients.
“People with radiation andry, diabetic foot ulcer, or bone infection and their treatments are 30-60 treatments, two hours at a time, Monday through Friday, under the normal circumstances,” Michael Barrett, a nurse practitioner.
Source: KMEG 14 FOX 44
