by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jun 1, 2021 | Nutrition & Wound Healing
I can’t decide if I am seeing more truly starving patients since I started focusing on nutrition, or if I’m just more sensitive to it. All 3 of these patients have a body mass index (BMI) of less than 17. The first patient completely healed a stage 4 pressure ulcer...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 27, 2021 | Tales of the Medicare Disadvantaged, The Patient's Voice
This is a 61 year old patient with weeping legs due to edema from heart failure. When I first saw her, I did arterial screening with skin perfusion pressure and her SPP values were 54 mmHg and 60 mmHg with a reasonable pulse volume recording, which means she doesn’t...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 26, 2021 | Fight the Good Fight
Speaker: Helen Gelly, MD, FUHM, FACCWS, UHM/ABPM HyperbaRXs Marietta, GA Moderator: Tyler Sexton, MD, DMT, CHWS, MAPWCA Please see the Zoom info below! ACHM is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: ACHM Webinar: Regulatory Updates in Hyperbaric Medicine...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 26, 2021 | Don't Miss This
This is a 37 yo man with a non-healing wound at the site of a left chest catheter port. He has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and the port for his chemotherapy was removed 4 weeks after it was put in because it looked infected. He has had an extensive region of erythema and...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 25, 2021 | Don't Miss This
Axillary web syndrome (AWS), also known as cording, can occur as side effect of breast cancer surgery – usually when surgery has been performed on the lymph nodes of the axilla (armpit). The cord is a thick, rope-like structure under the skin that can limit the...
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...
