Check out this article by Efthymios Gkotsoulias, David Kuten and me, published in the April issue of Today’s Wound Clinic entitled, “Multidisciplinary Teams, All the Time: Treat the Patient and Not the Wound.” The patient had a limb-threatening lesion, and his leg was saved thanks to early arterial screening (at the CHI St. Luke’s Wound Clinic in The Woodlands, Texas that means arterial screening done at the FIRST VISIT), timely and skilled endovascular revascularization, making the right diagnosis (pyoderma gangrenosum), early and aggressive nutritional intervention in a clearly malnourished patient, and a surgeon committed to limb salvage.
While I did spend 23 years at the Houston Medical Center, this “medical center” case was treated successfully at our suburban hospital 35 miles away. As we said in the article:
This kind of efficient care does not require a major medical center—our hospital is in a suburban area. It does require team members to be identified beforehand, to know each other’s skill set, to be committed to same-day responsiveness in communication, to have some flexibility in patient scheduling, and to understand when a situation is limb threatening and respond accordingly. The wound center practitioner was able to identify the major barriers to healing on the first visit, so no time was wasted in creating a cohesive plan or getting the involvement of an interventionalist and surgeon with the right skill sets. Teams like this can be created by committed individuals in any community.
–Caroline
Dr. Fife is a world renowned wound care physician dedicated to improving patient outcomes through quality driven care. Please visit my blog at CarolineFifeMD.com and my Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/carolinefifemd/videos
