Traditionally, Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) has been used for chronic wounds, like non healing diabetic ulcerations or dehisced surgical incisions. NPWT is quite successful for these types of wounds, but recently there has been a trend to use NPWT for burn victims. This paper summarizes a case of 5 patients who were burned in a dust explosion in Taiwan in 2015 and NPWT was used, not only to treat the wounds, but also to facilitate the skin grafting.
NPWT was first approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration in 1995. Over the years it has evolved into a few different variations like NPWT with instillation and even NWPT with heating or cooling pads. The basic items needed are: a porous open celled foam cut to fit inside the …show more content…
Initially, the most important needs of burns victims are fluid control, treating smoke inhalation, nutritional support and infection control. According to Teng (2016), “The most important way to increase survival rate is to remove dead tissues and perform escharotomy, followed by skin grafting.” (p 15). After they all had standard burn care treatment consisting of surgical debridement of the affected areas, the NPWT was applied. The foam was cut to cover the entire area that was burned and non-adhesive dressing was applied to areas that were not affected to protect them. A segmental compartment-cover technique was used to cover the entire area. A y-connector was used on large areas to keep the even pressure could be applied over the entire area. In addition, protective dressings were applied to all exposed bones or tendons. Once the therapy was started, the patients were placed in the Intensive Care Unit for monitoring. The range of pressure was from -75 to -125 mmHg depending on how well it was tolerated by each patient.
Normally, dressing changes for burns would be 2 to 3 times a day. For NPWT, dressing changes are only every 2 to 3 days. This cuts down on time that the affected areas are exposed, and therefore the probabilities of infection can be reduced. Also, the pain of dressing changes can be reduced. Having the entire area covered also helped with tolerance of patient being transferred in and out of bed. This also significantly cut down on the amount of time the nursing personnel had to spend changing
NPWT was first approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration in 1995. Over the years it has evolved into a few different variations like NPWT with instillation and even NWPT with heating or cooling pads. The basic items needed are: a porous open celled foam cut to fit inside the …show more content…
Initially, the most important needs of burns victims are fluid control, treating smoke inhalation, nutritional support and infection control. According to Teng (2016), “The most important way to increase survival rate is to remove dead tissues and perform escharotomy, followed by skin grafting.” (p 15). After they all had standard burn care treatment consisting of surgical debridement of the affected areas, the NPWT was applied. The foam was cut to cover the entire area that was burned and non-adhesive dressing was applied to areas that were not affected to protect them. A segmental compartment-cover technique was used to cover the entire area. A y-connector was used on large areas to keep the even pressure could be applied over the entire area. In addition, protective dressings were applied to all exposed bones or tendons. Once the therapy was started, the patients were placed in the Intensive Care Unit for monitoring. The range of pressure was from -75 to -125 mmHg depending on how well it was tolerated by each patient.
Normally, dressing changes for burns would be 2 to 3 times a day. For NPWT, dressing changes are only every 2 to 3 days. This cuts down on time that the affected areas are exposed, and therefore the probabilities of infection can be reduced. Also, the pain of dressing changes can be reduced. Having the entire area covered also helped with tolerance of patient being transferred in and out of bed. This also significantly cut down on the amount of time the nursing personnel had to spend changing