International study to develop the WOUND-Q patient-reported outcome measure for all types of chronic wounds.

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) for chronic wounds mainly focus on specific types of wounds. Our team developed the WOUND-Q for use with all types of wounds in any anatomic location. We conducted 60 concept elicitation interviews with patients in Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United States. Analysis identified concepts of interest to patients and scales were formed and refined through cognitive interviews with 20 patients and input from 26 wound care experts. Scales were translated into Danish and Dutch. An international field-test study collected data from 881 patients (1020 assessments) with chronic wounds. Rasch measurement theory (RMT) analysis was used to refine the scales and examine psychometric properties. RMT analysis supported the reliability and validity of 13 WOUND-Q scales that measure wound characteristics (assessment, discharge, and smell), health-related quality of life (life impact, psychological, sleep impact, and social), experience of care (information, home care nurses, medical team, and office staff), and wound treatment (dressing and suction device). The WOUND-Q can be used to measure outcomes in research and clinical practice from the perspective of patients with any type of wound.

Topical oxygen therapy results in complete wound healing in diabetic foot ulcers.

Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are a significant problem in an aging population. Fifteen percent of diabetics develop a DFU over their lifetime, which can lead to potential amputation. The 5-year survival rate after amputation is 31%, which is greater than the lifetime risk of mortality from cancer. Topical oxygen is a promising technique for the adjunctive therapy of chronic wounds including DFUs, but few controlled studies exist to support its clinical adoption. The aim of this study was to compare a portable topical oxygen delivery system in patients with nonhealing DFUs to standard best practice. Twenty patients were randomized into a topical oxygen group (n = 10), and a nonplacebo control group with regular dressings and standard care (n = 10), and attended the diabetic foot clinic once weekly for 8 weeks. Ulcer surface area over time was analyzed using standardized digital imaging software. DFUs were present without healing for a mean duration of 76 weeks prior to the study. They found a significant difference in healing rate between patients receiving topical oxygen and those receiving standard care. Topical oxygen, therefore, represents a potentially exciting new technology to shorten healing time in patients with nonhealing DFUs. More prospective randomized and powered studies are needed to determine the benefits of topical oxygen, but our current results are very promising.

Nutrition and the Plastic Surgeon: Possible Interventions and Practice Considerations.

The objective of this article is to convey the importance of nutrition in plastic surgery, to offer possible outpatient nutritional interventions within the surgical care setting, and to guide the plastic surgeon in integrating nutrition as a key practice enhancement strategy for the care of wound patients and beyond. The impact of nutritional status on surgical outcomes is well recognized. Malnutrition is very frequent among the hospitalized patient population and up to 1 in 4 plastic surgery outpatient is at risk for malnutrition. Micro- and macronutrients are both essential for optimal wound healing and although specific patient populations within the field of plastic surgery are more at risk of malnutrition, universal screening, and actions should be implemented. Outpatient interventions to promote adequate nutritional intake and address barriers to the access of fruits and vegetables have included both exposure and incentive interventions. In the clinical setting, universal screening using validated and rapid tools such as the Canadian Nutritional Screening Tool are encouraged. Such screening should be complemented by appropriate blood work, body mass index measurements, and prompt referral to a dietician when appropriate. The notion of prehabilitation has also emerged with impetus in surgery and encompasses the nutritional optimization of patients by promoting the enhancement of functional capacity preoperatively.

Cost-effectiveness of telemonitoring screening for diabetic foot ulcer: a mathematical model.

BACKGROUND: One of the most common (and costly) complications of diabetes are diabetic foot ulcers, which often result in lower-extremity amputation. Regular foot care can reduce complications; however, roughly half of Canadians with diabetes do not participate in screening. We sought to evaluate the economic effects of using telemonitoring for diabetic foot ulcer prevention using mathematical modelling. METHODS: We used Markov modelling to compare current screening standards (standard care) to population-wide and targeted (high-risk) telemonitoring programs in a hypothetical cohort of Canadian patients aged 60 years. We varied the effectiveness (or outcome), defined as the proportion of diabetic foot ulcers prevented, to explore cost-effectiveness using model parameters from published literature and clinical experts. RESULTS: At 20%-40% effectiveness, population-based prevention resulted in 0.00399-0.00790 quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) gained per person over 5 years and an incremental cost of $479-$402 compared to standard care. At 15%-40% effectiveness, high-risk prevention resulted in a cost decrease per person over 5 years ($1.26-$25.55), with health benefits of 0.000207-0.00058 QALYs gained. INTERPRETATION: The use of telemonitoring in the diabetic lower extremity can offer patients better quality of life and can be cost-effective compared to current Canadian screening practices. Future work should focus on developing and validating technologies based on objective outcome measures for remote monitoring of the diabetic foot.

Development of a Universal Nutritional Screening Platform for Plastic Surgery Patients.

Plastic surgeons routinely see patients with complex or chronic wounds of all etiology. In a previous study, we found that up to 1 in 4 of these patients is at risk for malnutrition, which may be influencing their ability to heal. The goal of this study was to develop and validate a universal screening protocol that would be fast and accurate and allow for effective intervention and optimization of nutrition before plastic surgery. METHODS: To accomplish these goals, we adopted a 2-part screening algorithm using the Canadian Nutritional Screening Tool (CNST) to triage patients in our outpatient clinics and then further screened those identified as being at risk using the Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) tool and blood work. RESULTS: We screened 111 patients with diagnoses related to breast cancer (n = 10; 9.01%), elective surgery (n = 38; 34.23%), emergency surgery (n = 8; 7.21%), fractures (n = 15; 13.51%), and wounds (n = 40; 36.04%). Of the screened subjects, 15.32% (n = 17) were found to be at nutritional risk using the CNST, and 13 were confirmed to be moderately or severely malnourished using the SGA. Importantly, there were no positive correlations between nutritional status and smoking, diabetes, body mass index, or age, indicating that a universal screening protocol is needed to effectively screen a diverse plastic surgery population for malnutrition. CONCLUSIONS: Screening patients with both the CNST and the SGA is an effective way to identify patients before surgery to improve outcomes.

Classification of burn injuries using near-infrared spectroscopy.

Early surgical management of those burn injuries that will not heal spontaneously is critical. The decision to excise and graft is based on a visual assessment that is often inaccurate but yet continues to be the primary means of grading the injury. Superficial and intermediate partial-thickness injuries generally heal with appropriate wound care while deep partial- and full-thickness injuries generally require surgery. This study explores the possibility of using near-infrared spectroscopy to provide an objective and accurate means of distinguishing shallow injuries from deeper burns that require surgery. Twenty burn injuries are studied in five animals, with burns covering <1% of the total body surface area. Carefully controlled superficial, intermediate, and deep partial-thickness injuries as well as full-thickness injuries could be studied with this model. Near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy was used to evaluate these injuries 1 to 3 hours after the insult. A probabilistic model employing partial least-squares logistic regression was used to determine the degree of injury, shallow (superficial or intermediate partial) from deep (deep partial and full thickness), based on the reflectance spectrum of the wound. A leave-animal-out cross-validation strategy was used to test the predictive ability of a 2-latent variable, partial least-squares logistic regression model to distinguish deep burn injuries from shallow injuries. The model displayed reasonable ranking quality as summarized by the area under the receiver operator characteristics curve, AUC = 0.879. Fixing the threshold for the class boundaries at 0.5 probability, the model sensitivity (true positive fraction) to separate deep from shallow burns was 0.90, while model specificity (true negative fraction) was 0.83. Using an acute porcine model of thermal burn injuries, the potential of near-infrared spectroscopy to distinguish between shallow healing burns and deeper burn injuries was demonstrated. While these results should be considered as preliminary and require clinical validation, a probabilistic model capable of differentiating these classes of burns would be a significant aid to the burn specialist.

Evaluation of Ki-67 as a histological index of burn damage in a swine model.

Histological diagnosis of burn depth lacks consensus. The purpose of this study was to determine whether Ki-67, a cell proliferation marker, provides an index of integument viability after burn injury. Induction of thermal burn injuries (3, 12, 20, 30, 75, 90, and 120 seconds) were made with a brass rod heated to 100°C on the dorsal trunk of the swine. Controls were created with a brass rod heated to 37.5°C. Four 6-mm biopsies were obtained from each site for histological analysis of Ki-67. Biopsies were taken at the following times postinjury: 1, 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, and 96 hours. The results illustrate a characteristic Ki-67 nuclear staining in the basal layer of the epidermis and in the hair follicle. With increasing thermal injury, the nuclei of the cells changed morphology: condensing, fragmenting, and elongating. The uniqueness of the labeling index was to include only morphologically intact nuclei as having capacity to proliferation. Quantitative analysis showed a reduction in the mean number of Ki-67-positive cells, suggesting a reduced regenerative capacity. This study supports using this index as a means of performing histology for burn depth analysis. In future studies, determining viability of partial-thickness burns will require multiple histological markers such as Ki-67 in addition to hematoxylin and eosin staining.

Noninvasive measurement of edema in partial thickness burn wounds.

A lack of noninvasive tools to quantify edema has limited our understanding of burn wound edema pathophysiology in a clinical setting. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) is a new noninvasive tool able to measure water concentration/edema in tissue. The purpose of this study was to determine whether NIR could detect water concentration changes or edema formation in acute partial-thickness burn injuries. Adult burn patients within 72 hours postinjury, thermal etiology, partial-thickness burn depth, and <20% TBSA were included. Burn wounds were stratified into partial-thickness superficial or deep wounds based on histology and wound healing time. NIR devices were used to quantify edema in a burn and respective control sites. The sample population consisted of superficial (n = 12) and deep (n = 5) partial-thickness burn injuries. The patients did not differ with respect to age (40 +/- 15 years), TBSA (5 +/- 4%), and mean time for edema assessment (2 days). Water content increased 15% in burned tissue compared with the respective control regions. There were no differences in water content at the control sites. At 48 hours, deep partial-thickness injuries showed a 23% increase in water content compared with 18% superficial partial-thickness burns. NIR could detect differences in water content or edema formation in partial-thickness burns and unburned healthy regions. NIR holds promise as a noninvasive, portable clinical tool to quantify water content or edema in burn wounds.