Mechanically Powered Disposable Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Use in Diabetic Foot Wounds

In this clinical case presentation, the presenter illustrates a case study of a right foot plantar ulcer treated with mechanically powered, disposable negative pressure wound therapy. Data from this poster were presented at the Symposium on Advanced Wound Care Fall Virtual (November 2-4, 2020).

For more information, see Mechanically Powered Disposable Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Use in Diabetic Foot Wounds here.

Transcript

I'm Dr Robert Klein. I am an associate professor of surgery at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Greenville, and I also serve as the division chair for Wound Care for Prism Health upstate, also located in the beautiful region of the upstate region of South Carolina.

I'm here to talk with you today about a poster that I presented on the mechanically disposable negative pressure wound therapy for use in diabetic foot. Before I talk about the poster, I wanted to talk about negative pressure wound therapy just in general.

We're in our third decade of use for negative pressure wound therapy, and it was invented at Wake Forest, just a little bit up the road from where I reside. If I had to think about one modality in wound care that's just been a game-changer for me, it's negative pressure wound therapy, or vacuum-assisted closure.

Now, having the ability to have a mechanically-powered device that I can use on my patients that's on the shelf, that I can just pull off the shelf and put on a patient for a small to medium-size wound with mild to moderate exudate is just another tool in my toolkit that I like to use for my diabetic foot patients.

Also for patients who have other wounds, such as dehiscence, some of my surgical wounds, and closed incisional management. In the poster that we're talking about, I have 4 diabetic patients that I use mechanically-powered disposable negative pressure on, and for a variety of wounds.

There were some surgical wounds. There was an open ring amputation, transmetatarsal amputation, and another surgical wound. The most important take-home message for using mechanically-powered disposable negative pressure wound therapy is that it's another tool in your toolkit.

Some of the advantages that I like about disposable negative pressure wound therapy, and especially mechanically-powered, is that the patient is not tethered to a power source. It's disposable, it's discreet, it's silent.

The patient can wear it under their clothes. No one knows that they have it. They can go back to their normal daily activities and lifestyle. Once again, I think it's a great toolkit for all of us to consider when using negative pressure wound therapy for our diabetic foot ulcerations, wound dehiscence, and surgical wounds.

In the series that I published, once again, we had a wide variety of wounds. The average time for the disposable negative pressure device was 16 to 24 days. I got the granulation tissue up to the skin line. It was very robust, healthy granulation tissue.

I stepped down their care to a collagen with silver and OCR wound dressing and took them onto closure. All of the patients did unbelievably well in this series, and I've used disposable negative pressure in my practice ever since, even before this poster was published.

It's something that I highly recommend for you clinicians out there that are treating diabetic foot ulcerations, wound dehiscence, surgical wounds that are small to medium-size wounds with mild to moderate exudate.