Determining the Most Appropriate Compression for Patients

In this interview, Dr. Callie Horn speaks on the topic of compression and some considerations the clinician should keep in mind when determining the most appropriate type of compression. To read more on the topic, read their article from the May Special Topic supplement on compression and venous leg ulcers here.
 

Transcript:

Callie Horn: Hello. My name is Callie Horn. I'm a fourth year general surgery resident at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. I'm currently doing a one-year research fellowship with Dr. Lantis in wound care.

So first off, when a clinician's deciding what type of compression is best for their patient, I would look to start with vascular studies. You want to really, first off, make sure what the origin of the ulcer is, make sure it's truly venous in nature. Then additionally, people can have concurrent arterial disease, so you want to make sure that you're not out of range with an extremely low ABI, where compression therapy could be dangerous for them. So making sure you've got all the studies lined up first. Then you want to look at some other patient-specific factors. Do they have a very high BMI? Are they carrying a lot of weight? Would a stiffer bandage benefit them more? More or less, there are a lot of factors that start sending you down this algorithm that is actually in our publication for reference to help you determine what compression therapy would be best for your patient.