Wadley Advanced Wound Healing strives to save limbs, improve quality of life
Wadley Advanced Wound Healing and Hyperbarics is a place of healing.
“The reason this center is here and what we’re devoted to is healing wounds, not just treating them for months on end but healing them,” said Randy Powell, director of operations for the center.
Hard-to-heal wounds can sometimes lead to limb amputation. One goal of Wadley Advanced Wound Healing and Hyperbarics is to save people’s limbs and at the same time save their quality of life.
“If the wound doesn’t heal and it just goes on and on and on, it can put patients in danger of losing a limb, a toe, a foot or even a leg,” Powell said.
Wadley Advanced Wound Healing and Hyperbarics helps patients’ wounds heal in a variety of ways.
“We utilize a lot of advanced modalities and that includes hyperbaric medicine,” Powell said. “That also includes bio-engineered tissue grafts or skin substitutes. If a patient has a large wound that isn’t healing quickly enough, we do a bio-engineered tissue graft. There are many different types.”
“We do specialty dressings such as collagen dressings or silver dressing,” Powell said. “Silver remains consistent over the last 100 years as being an outstanding antibiotic. We also do compression dressings for patients who have edema.”
Sometimes patients need a walking cast or boot to help wounds heal and the center does that, too. “If a patient has a wound on the bottom of their foot and they can’t just stay off the foot, then we have to do something to get pressure off the wound on the bottom of the foot,” Powell said. “Those are the most difficult to heal because we’re walking on our feet all time. If there’s constant pressure on the wounds, it slows healing process … because it slows the blood flow to that area and it’s vital for healing.” The center has three hyperbaric chambers. Patients are sealed into hyperbaric chambers and receive 100 percent oxygen. Getting more oxygen to wounds is an important part of the healing process.
“It’s pressurized … the equivalent to being 33 feet underwater,” Powell said. “It pushes more oxygen into your blood stream than ambient pressure. The whole idea is to overcome an oxygen deficit that can be caused by a number of things. If circulation is poor, so is your oxygen transportation.” The center treats all types of wounds including those caused by diabetes, surgical wounds that don’t heal properly and pressure ulcers. Wadley Advanced Wound Healing and Hyperbarics has a caring, professional and specially-trained staff to care for patients.
Staff physicians are Dr. Dean Bowman, a family practice physician; Dr. Robert Klein, a podiatrist; and Dr. Charles Blankenship, a former Naval surgeon and the center’s medical director. All are specially trained in hyperbarics. “Our staff are very caring and compassionate. It’s not unusual for our nurses to contact patients at home on their days off just to check and see how their day is going. It’s a very caring staff. Our patients love our staff. It takes a special type of person to work in this environment. It’s not very glamorous,” Powell said. “A trip to the wound center can be the biggest thing in these patient’s lives. A lot of them are home-bound. … Our staff takes the time to get to know our patients. We care very much about our patients and their overall welfare,” Powell said. The center’s staff will arrange for transportation for its patients when necessary.
“We do whatever we can to help them,” Powell said.
Wadley Advanced Wound Care and Hyperbarics is located on the fourth floor of Wadley Regional Medical Center. The center opened in January 2015.
“Our staff and our physicians are dedicated to what we do here and that’s healing wounds,” Powell said.