Wound Care Treatments at St. Elizabeth's
In state-of-the-art facilities, a multidisciplinary team offers individualized treatment to patients suffering from non-healing wounds that can result from diabetes, peripheral vascular disease, neuropathy, radiation, trauma, and other conditions. Personalized plans are aimed at healing, preventing wound recurrence, maintaining mobility and preserving limbs. The center offers a full range of medical and surgical options, as well as specialized evaluation methods, intensive treatments, and advanced therapies for patients with wounds that resist healing for more than four weeks.
Wound Evaluation and treatment options include:
- Advanced wound care products
- Bioengineered tissue and skin substitutes
- Biografts, which work with the body’s own cells to promote healing
- Full contact casts
- Compression therapy
- Diabetic foot management
- Edema control
- Education about dressing changes, skin care and nutrition
- Growth factor therapy, which uses a patient’s own platelets to repair damaged tissue
- Hyperbaric oxygen
- Infection control
- Negative pressure wound therapy
- Pressure relief and injury prevention
- Skin perfusion testing (TCPO2, SPP and PVR)
- Specialized dressings to promote healing and limit the potential for infection
- Vascular and podiatric surgery
- Wound debridement
Getting Started with Wound Care
Getting started is easy!
For your first appointment, most patients are referred by their primary care physician, and the program operates by appointment. Upon referral to a Healogics Wound Care Center, patients undergo a thorough diagnostic examination to identify the type of wound they have and the underlying problems causing the wound. The initial appointment consists of a full assessment to determine the etiology of the wound, the appropriate classification and size of the wound, the overall health status of the patient, and the patient’s ability to comply with needed therapies.
Based on the evaluation, a customized treatment plan is developed to optimize the therapies best suited to address the patient’s needs. Wound size and depth are documented at the initial visit, and again at each subsequent visit. Some of the diagnostic modalities which may be used include:
- Laboratory evaluation
- Radiology (including MRI)
- Transcutaneous oxygen testing
- Vascular studies, electrocardiogram
- Ultrasound
After this determination, a program specifically tailored to your needs will be initiated based on the most effective treatment options. An interdisciplinary approach will be used to provide the maximum healing possible.
Specialized wound care is usually administered on an outpatient basis. Patients can drive themselves to the center for therapy.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
St. Elizabeth’s is one of very few hospitals in Boston offering hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), an intensive daily treatment for management of certain approved problem conditions and wounds. In HBOT, a patient relaxes in a pressurized chamber while breathing in 100 percent oxygen, accelerating the healing process by allowing the delivery of high concentrations of oxygen to the blood stream and wound bed.
What our Patients Say
Dear Wound Care Team,
Our Multidisciplinary Team
In addition to our talented physicians, the Center for Wound Care at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center has a committed staff who become deeply involved in our patients' care, treatment and overall health. Our staff includes:
- Gretchen Sennott, Clinical Program Director, RN, CHRN, WCC
- Mollie Sullivan, RN
- Michaela Mooney, RN
- Taylor Durfee, FOC
- Delia Rissmiller, RN & Ruth Smith, HBO Tech
Our Team
-
Allen B. Davis
General Surgery -
Steward Health Care