Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/244291
"Wound healing is energy intensive, and the more severe and bigger the wound, the more of your body's resources it takes." alone for more than two decades, now has company, with HealthONE alone adding two clinics with chambers in just the past year: one at Swedish Medical Center and one in the works at Sky Ridge Medical Center. "We have a small wound clinic in the hospital now, but it is one day a week, and we've realized that the necessities of the community for these services are greater," says Adam George, hospital liaison at Sky Ridge. The center's new Advanced Wound Care Clinic will house two mono-place (one-patient) hyperbaric chambers to help treat outpatient wound patients, and the Swedish clinic has four single-patient chambers. P/SL's multi-place chambers can hold 10 patients and their medical attendants at one time, allowing the hospital to also serve emergency and inpatient needs. Still, the new chambers have plenty of patients to treat, says Dr. Steven Snively, medical director of the Burn and Wound Clinic at Swedish. "I've already had a couple of patients whose wounds I had been unable to heal who have gone on to healing with the chamber." Many wounds respond to hyperbaric therapy, including surgical incisions, radiation-therapy burns, arterial-insufficiency ulcers and diabetic ulcers, Snively says. Grim statistics promise to keep these advanced clinics busy, with more than one-third of Americans obese and more than 25 million diabetic, a disease that accounts for more than 60 percent of the non-traumatic, lowerlimb amputations each year, according to the American Diabetes Association. Another 79 million Americans have pre-diabetes, the ADA says. An average chamber treatment prescription includes two hours a day, five days a week, for four to six weeks, Thombs says. About 75 percent of nonhealing wounds resolve when hyperbaric therapy is added to standard medical and surgical treatment. Medicare and most major insurance companies will cover treatment for severe diabetic foot and leg wounds, wounds following radiation therapy, and chronic bone infections, Thombs says. "That often means the bone has to be exposed, or you have to have a chronic bone infection that has failed medical management." If he could help patients earlier, treatments could be shorter and success rates higher, he says. But for now, Thombs will take his 75 percent. "Hyperbaric oxygen is another tool in the box." Can it be life-saving? "Absolutely. And it's definitely limb-saving, which makes a big difference in patients' quality of life." Dr. Paul Thombs and Dr. Bill Clem, both board certified in Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine, treat patients at Presbyterian/St. Luke's Hyperbaric Medicine Center, which has provided more than 130,000 patient treatments since its inception more than 25 years ago. A HealthONE representative can answer your questions and help you find the right physician. Call us today 303.575.0055 Health and Wellness Magazine • 95