Center for Wound Restoration

Barlow Respiratory Hospital Center for Wound Restoration is an award-winning Wound Care Program that serves critically ill and medically complex patients transferred from Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and short-term acute care hospitals for weaning from invasive mechanical ventilation and treatment of complex wounds and medical conditions.

Barlow Respiratory Hospital’s Center for Wound Restoration is an award – winning specialized program with an expert interdisciplinary clinical team including Board-Certified Physicians and Wound Care Certified (WCC) Registered Nurses who apply state-of-the-art treatment and healing interventions with a full range of therapies to heal wound and maximize function. The Center for Wound Restoration is an essential step in the continuum of care ensuring patients have access to expert treatment.

Barlow Respiratory Hospital has a strikingly lower rate of hospital-acquired pressure injuries compared to both the Pacific Region and the Nation in a national LTCH database.

Difficult-to-heal Wounds
Advances in medical technology and acute critical care in supporting and treating ICU patients have resulted in the emergence of the medically complex, chronically critically ill patient population, at high risk of alterations in skin integrity.

More than half of patients admitted to Barlow Respiratory Hospital have at least one difficult-to-heal wound that can complicate treatment of other serious conditions including cardiac, pulmonary, neuromuscular, endocrine, and renal diseases. Wounds classified as pressure injury stage 2 or higher and can benefit from expert clinical and critical care in treatment of pressure ulcer/injury and wound care management.

• Prevention of hospital-acquired conditions, which includes pressure injuries, is a patient safety priority.
• Goals of Wound Care include accurate skin assessment, care planning, and treatment of pressure injuries.
• Barlow’s chronically critically ill and medically complex patients have many of the risk factors for developing pressure injuries.
• Risk factors for the development of pressure injuries (wounds) include: advanced age, immobility, incontinence, malnutrition, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, poor circulation, and use of medical devices.

Treatment and healing interventions for complicated wounds include:

• Pressure Injuries
• Stage III pressure ulcers
• Stage IV pressure ulcers
• Surgical wounds
• Traumatic wounds
• Fistulae
• Abscesses
• Complex Wounds/Osteomyelitis
• Post-Amputation Wounds
• Necrotic Conditions
• Wounds complicated by existing diseases
• Wounds that require highly technical care
• Wounds that require nutritional support
• Wounds that require complex dressings