ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
At Southwest Medical Center’s Wound Care Center, patients are provided leading wound diagnostic and treatment methods, including hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), to heal even the most complex wounds.
The team of experts provides specialized care to diagnose and treat complex wounds that resisted healing for months or even years.
These include chronic, non-healing wounds such as burns, pressure sores and severe infections, as well as wounds that have not healed due to complications from diabetes, radiation therapy, trauma or other medical conditions.
Services include various skin graft applications, as well as an antimicrobial collagen-based wound matrix, which assists in the treatment of complicated and chronic wounds and compromised grafts.
HBOT is a featured service of the Wound Care Center, and using two therapy chambers, the team can provide treatments to promote healing in wounds that are resistant to standard methods of care such as skin-grafted wounds, diabetic leg or foot ulcers, seriously infected wounds and wounds caused by radiation therapy.
HBOT Certified Nurse Elizabeth Irby said the Sechrist chambers are pressurized devices that supply 100 percent pressurized oxygen in the patient’s environment.
“In our environment right now, we breathe 21 percent oxygen, and we’re at one atmospheric pressure,” she said. “When we fly or go to the mountains, we change atmospheric pressures, and in the chambers, we treat illnesses at two atmospheric pressures or above with 100 percent oxygen. That’s different than what we live in every day.”
HBOT chambers have been used to treat illnesses for years at SWMC, and while they are more popular in coastal communities in the U.S., they are rare on the High Plains.
“In our area, the closest would be Amarillo, and Hays has some too,” Irby said. “In Western Kansas, we’re the only one.”
Irby said there are many wound types that are approved for HBOT.
“For example, a person who has a diabetic foot ulcer that is not healing, is chronic, has not responded to previous treatment of antibiotics, maybe there’s been part of an amputation done, this type of oxygen therapy can be used to help treat an illness like that,” she said.
However, Irby said these are not simple overnight treatments.
“Just like the disease of diabetes itself, it takes a long time for it to the damage it does, so it does take quite a while for these treatments to show improvement,” she said. “A treatment in these chambers last upwards of 90 minutes at the two atmospheric pressure. They do this Monday through Friday, and they do that for 40 treatments. It is quite a committent for the patient to undergo this type of oxygen therapy.”
Irby, though, did say the HBOT chambers can prove quite helpful to patients with chronic wounds.
“It could be a person who had breast cancer and underwent chemotherapy and radiation,” she said. “The radiation burns parts of the body, so this type of treatment can help what’s called homeostasis in those cells to help them regain their normalcy and continue to grow properly. Evidence shows this is a very beneficial type of treatment for patients.”
Irby said the chambers likewise allow patients to stay close to home for treatment.
“We treat patients in wound care frequently,” she said. “If a person meets the criteria they need to undergo hyperbaric treatment, we can do that here rather than them going some place else like Amarillo for the treatment to be done.”
Irby said the chambers have been a part of the Wound Care Center for a number of years and used frequently, and officials with the center want people to know they have another avenue for wound care treatments.
“Some patients can undergo oxygen therapy before they even have a surgical procedure done,” she said. “It improves the oxygen in the vessels where the surgery is going to happen. After surgery, if a person has had a graft or a flap applied to an injury to help it heal and it’s showing it’s compromised, the patient can go into the chambers for that.”
Irby said hyperbaric medicine was originally used and is still used for emergency purposes such as carbon monoxide poisoning.
“These chambers here at Southwest Medical Center are not open 24 hours a day,” she said. “We do not treat emergent situations in them.”
The Wound Care Clinic is open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 8 a.m. to noon Friday and is located at 305 W. 15th Street Suite 204 in Liberal. For more information, call 620-624-2243, or go to www.swmedcenter.com. Irby emphasized the center is a specialty clinic.
“Before a patient can be seen in Wound Care, they would need to be evaluated with their primary doctor or through the emergency department or even urgent care,” she said. “They would receive a referral to come to Wound Care.”
