Management, as well as prevention, of wound infection is key in the promotion of the healing process. In India, over one million people are moderately or severely burnt every year, and managing the challenging burn wounds is a daily reality for clinicians in the country. Silver has been used as an antimicrobial in burn wound management for decades and modern advanced dressings can provide safe prevention and management of infection in these cases. This article reports the cases of two adults, an infant and a child with burns, at risk of infection and managed with a Technology Lipido-Colloid non-adherent dressing with silver (TLC-Ag; UrgoTul Ag/Silver). The main benefits observed when using the evaluated dressing in these patients included rapid wound healing but also patient-related outcomes, such as decrease in pain and atraumatic removal.

Clockwise from top left:

Dr Venkateswaran

Plastic Surgeon, Jupiter Hospital, Mumbai, India

Dr Ravichander Rao A

Plastic Surgeon, Care Hospital, Hyderabad, India

Dr Krishna Kumar

Plastic, Aesthetics, Burns, Hand and Reconstructive Microsurgeon, Kovai Medical Centre & Hospital, Coimbatore, India

Dr Sankamithra

Consultant Plastic Surgeon, Lakshmi Medical center, Pollachi, India

Key words

• Burns
• Lipido-colloid non-adherent dressing

• Silver

Declarations

All authors have no particular conflicts of interest to declare regarding these cases.

Negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) supports the healing process by removing fluid and drawing out the infection from a wound, promoting the growth of new tissue. The device works by providing and distributing negative pressure evenly across the wound bed, either through the application of an open cell foam or a gauze dressing. NPWT provides a warm, moist wound bed while removing wound fluid that contains factors that inhibit cell growth, enhances wound oxygenation and improves the flow of blood and nutrients to the wound. NPWT also creates mechanical forces that influence the wound macroscopically, inducing cell proliferation, cell migration to the wound and angiogenesis. For infected wounds, the device can be used to instil antibiotics. In this article, a 57-year-old Caucasian woman with respiratory failure developed sepsis secondary to an intra-abdominal infection with abscess. Vancomycin 1mg/mL wound instillation, instilled as 100mL every 3 hours with a dwell time of 10 minutes, was administered concomitantly with intravenous vancomycin in the successful management of this patient.

Alison Bunnell

Doctor of Pharmacy Candidate 2022, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA

Erin Beauclair

Doctor of Pharmacy Candidate 2022, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA

Breanna Jones

Doctor of Pharmacy, Pharmacy Department, Sanford Medical Center Fargo, Fargo, ND, USA

Emily Greenstein

Advanced Practice Registered Nurse and Certified Nurse Practitioner, Wound Care, Sanford Medical Center Fargo, Fargo, ND, USA

Justin M Jones

Doctor of Pharmacy, Pharmacy Department, Sanford Medical Center Fargo, Fargo, ND, USA

Andrea R Clarens

Doctor of Pharmacy Pharmacy Department, Sanford Bemidji Medical Center, Bemidji, MN, USA

Key words

• Acute kidney injury
• Computed tomography

• Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes

• Negative pressure wound therapy

Declaration

Emily Greenstein reports she has been a consultant for Urgo medical, 3M and coloplast. 3M manufactures V.A.C.  VeraFlo. None of these manufacture or distribute vancomycin instillation described in this manuscript.

Background: In some patients, diabetic foot ulcers may heal slowly despite tight control of blood glucose and normal limb circulation, implying the presence of multifactorial, unidentified factors to wound healing. Previous efforts to identify these factors using binary variables, such as amputation or specific healing timelines, inadequately reflect the complexities of wound healing capacity.

Aims: We aimed to identify factors associated with delayed diabetic foot ulcer healing.

Methods: Eight factors were assumed to affect diabetic foot ulcer healing; patient age, age at the onset of diabetes, sex, peripheral arterial disease (PAD), HbA1c, smoking as measured by the Brinkman index (BI), dialysis and bone infection. They were analysed using linear regression and multivariable analysis against three healing indices: total healing period (THP), granulation time (GT) and time to contraction onset (TCO).

Results: PAD and BI correlated positively with all three indices. Patients with PAD exhibited significantly extended THP, GT and TCO. An increase of 100 in BI corresponded with a 1.53 day increase in GT.

Conclusion: PAD was associated with delayed healing according to every measure analysed, while BI was linked with slower granulation. Besides THP, the measurements of GT — and possibly TCO — could evaluate some aspects of healing capacity of diabetic ulcers.

Kazufumi Tachi

Senior Lecturer, Division of Plastic Surgery, Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Sendai, Japan

Koichi Gonda

Professor, Division of Plastic Surgery, Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Sendai, Japan

Takashi Kochi

Chief Surgeon, Department of Plastic Surgery, Sendai City Hospital, Sendai, Japan

Jyunya Niwa

Research Associate, Division of Plastic Surgery, Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Sendai, Japan

Key words

● Diabetic foot ulcer

● New index of wound healing

● Brinkman index

Declarations

All authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Accurate skin assessment is key to pressure ulcer prevention. It has been shown that a lack of accurate assessment means that patients with dark skin tones are more likely to be diagnosed with higher-category pressure ulcers, leading to poorer outcomes (Oozageer Gunowa et al, 2017). This article highlights training and development carried out at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester to incorporate skin tone awareness into aSSKINg bundle assessments and PURPOSE T pressure ulcer risk assessments, using the skin tone tool (Dhoonmoon et al, 2021).

Susy Pramod

Lead Tissue Viability Nurse, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester

Jane Mayes

Honorary Tissue Viability Nurse, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester; Clinical Education Manager, Essity

Katie Bowling

Tissue Viability Nurse, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester

Ged McDermott

Tissue Viability Nurse, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester

Key words

• Assessment
• Pressure ulcer
• PURPOSE T
• Skin tone