Dr. Kerry Thibodeaux – Medical Director, Wound Treatment Center (00:03) The Wound Treatment Center and Opelousas General Health System have been here for 30 years, we have one of the greatest teams with a tremendous amount of experience. We’re available 24/7 And we treat both inpatients and outpatients for a variety of wound complications.
Wound Care Benefits patients by bringing together a multidisciplinary team targeted specifically to help get their wounds to respond to therapy and ultimately heal and restore them back to their pre-wound function. The most common types of wounds that we see in the wound treatment center are related to diabetic complications, such as diabetic foot ulcers and bone infections in diabetics, as well as people with venous disease where they have venous leg ulcers as a result of untreated venous hypertension. Another common group of patients that we see are patients who suffered traumatic injuries that are complicated by infection, as well as patients who have surgical complications with the resulting wound as a result of either an infection or some other failure of the surgical procedure.
Currently, there are 14 approved indications for hyperbaric therapy. When the patients are referred to us for possible hyperbaric therapy. We review their records, talk to them, examine them, talk to their physicians, and then pre-certify them for treatment to make sure that it’s a covered indication. The most common indications for hyperbaric therapy that we see here in our center are soft tissue infections, usually what’s commonly referred to as flesh-eating bacteria, as well as acute arterial insufficiency where the patient acutely loses blood flow mostly to their extremities, or have complications following some sort of endovascular reconstruction. surgical complications. Of course, compromised flaps, patients have a procedure, a flap is used to close the wound and it starts to fail for various reasons, as well as traumatic injuries that require additional oxygenation to help with healing.
Another group of patients that we see here more commonly, or patients with these chronic bone infections that don’t respond to conventional therapy, as well as people that suffer complications from radiation, including radiation cystitis, where they’re having blood in their urine, radiation proctitis where they’re having blood in your stool as a result of the radiation. And then most commonly, patients who undergo radiation therapy from breast cancer, where they socially develop what’s called radiation, mastitis. So all of these diagnoses have or have been shown to improve with hyperbaric therapy.
