Reduction in incidence of deep sternal wound infections: random or real?

Objective: Comorbidities predisposing cardiac surgical patients toward deep sternal wound infection, such as diabetes and obesity, are rising in the United States. Longitudinal analysis of risk factors, morbidity, and mortality was performed to assessed effects of these health trends on deep sternal wound infection rates.

Methods: In this retrospective analysis of all median sternotomies performed at a single institution from 1991 through 2006, demographic and surgical characteristics were identified from a prospective database.

Healing modulation induced by freeze-dried platelet-rich plasma and micronized allogenic dermis in a diabetic wound model.

The incidence and prevalence of chronic and diabetic wounds are increasing and clinical treatments to tackle these epidemics are still insufficient. In this study, we tested the ability of freeze-dried platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and an allogenic micronized acellular dermal matrix alone and in combination to modulate diabetic wound healing. Therapeutic materials were applied to 1.

Early experience using low-frequency ultrasound in chronic wounds.

Periodic wound debridement promotes healing in chronic wounds. Low-frequency ultrasonic debridement (LFUD) is a promising adjunct to wound care, which offers relatively painless debridement and bacterial biofilm destruction. We performed LFUD on 17 patients over 8 months, with a minimum follow-up of 3 months.

The relative thermal stability of tissue macromolecules and cellular structure in burn injury.

When tissue is subjected to higher than physiological temperatures, protein and cell organelle structures can be altered resulting in cell death and subsequent tissue necrosis. A burn injury can be stratified into three main zones, coagulation, stasis and edema, which correlate with the extent of heat exposure and thermal properties of the tissue. While there has been considerable effort to characterize the time-temperature dependence of the injury, relatively little attention has been paid to the other important variable, the thermal susceptibility of the tissue.

The development of an educational web site for burn care: burnsurgery.org.

Advances in burn care are well documented in the literature but often do not reach health care professionals who treat burn patients. The World Wide Web provides instant access to a wide variety of information globally. We describe the development of www.