by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 24, 2021 | Don't Miss This, Fight the Good Fight
A 44 year old woman presented with left arm and right lower leg ulcers that had been present for over 3 years. She has been seen by many specialists and treated with multiple courses of oral antibiotics, oral steroids, topical steroids, and advanced dressings. She...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 21, 2021 | Nutrition & Wound Healing
We see a lot of sad situations in the field of wound care, but every now and then, a case really gets to you. This patient is a 47 yo man with a sacral pressure ulcer which had developed 2 months earlier when he was hospitalized for pneumonia. He suffers from a rare,...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 20, 2021 | Fight the Good Fight
I’ve posted a series of videos that show the rate at which lymphatic fluid will drip out of even very small wounds. Watch closely and you can see the fluid pooling in these wounds and then, in many cases, dripping down. I have a LOT of these videos! This is lymphatic...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 19, 2021 | Nutrition & Wound Healing, PAD Hall of Shame
This is a retired physician in his 90’s whose mind is as sharp as a tack. He’s got congestive heart failure (CHF) and leg edema so severe that his skin is splitting open. He’s a chair sleeper in part because he has orthopnea (shortness of breath lying down), but also...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 18, 2021 | Don't Miss This
I thought I saw this tendon sort of quivering. I am only sorry that I wasn’t able to film while I worked. When I opened up the bloated end of this tendon, I found the motherlode of maggots. This video shows the little explorer who alerted me to the problem. You can...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 17, 2021 | Don't Miss This
Wounds often form over tendons (particularly the Achilles and the lateral ankle). It’s important to ask the patient to move whatever the tendon might attach to – to see if the wound “moves” with the tendon. For example, if the wound is over the Achilles, ask the...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 14, 2021 | Fight the Good Fight, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
Check out my article on the Ethics of Off-Label Use of HBOT on the Hyperbaric Aware campaign site! There are many fantastic blogs by folks you likely know. –Caroline Caroline Fife, M.D.Dr. Fife is a world renowned wound care physician dedicated to improving...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 14, 2021 | Don't Miss This
My initial reaction was, “What the heck is THAT? I don’t want to be the Sigourney Weaver of wound care!” The patient is a 30+ year survivor of high-dose radiation for a sarcoma over her right hip and thigh. She has terrible late effects of radiation, and the tissue...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 13, 2021 | Fight the Good Fight
This is a 70-year-old man with a dehisced flap on the plantar surface of the left foot after a melanoma excision 6 weeks earlier. Based on the photos that he showed me from his phone, the cancer surgeon struggled to close the large defect on the bottom of his foot...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 12, 2021 | Fight the Good Fight
This is a 57-year-old woman with rheumatoid arthritis and a non-healing ulcer of the leg for a year, likely due to vasculitis. Traumatizing vasculitic ulcers with sharp debridement often makes them larger (besides being horribly painful) – so it’s generally a...
