by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 5, 2021 | Fight the Good Fight, Nutrition & Wound Healing
I’ve been talking about how I use IMPACT® in surgical patients who are nutritionally at risk. This is the second patient I tried the approach on. She’s a very beautiful, 33-year-old, previously healthy young woman who developed sepsis with cardiogenic shock and was in...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 4, 2021 | Fight the Good Fight, Nutrition & Wound Healing
I have spent the last several years making nutrition a major focus of my wound care practice, and I think it has revolutionized the way I manage patients. It would be ideal if all my patients could be evaluated by a registered dietician, but unless they have diabetes,...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 30, 2021 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Nutrition & Wound Healing
There’s increasing interest in Vitamin D. I became focused on this after a series of patients who failed to heal operative wounds. I found their Vitamin D-OH levels were in the teens (in some cases, single digits) when 30 is the lowest value we want for wound healing....
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Feb 4, 2021 | COVID-19, COVID-19 Diaries
The Aftermath of Wave One For months I have been meaning to post more COVID diaries, but in some ways, the aftermath of the battle was harder than the battle. When we finally got past the first COVID wave, everyone focused on getting business back to normal. There was...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 8, 2020 | Fight the Good Fight
My good friend Frank Aviles, PT is one of the most creative and innovative people I have ever known. He is the Wound Care Service Line Director at Natchitoches Regional Medical Center in Louisiana, serves on the editorial board for Today’s Wound Clinic and is a well...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 29, 2020 | Do the Right Thing: Thoughts on Quality, Fight the Good Fight, PAD Hall of Shame, US Wound Registry
I recently reviewed the case of an elderly woman with a non-healing wound who had ischemic rest pain and extreme malnutrition, neither of which were addressed by the wound center at which she was treated previously. Not surprisingly she failed to improve with the...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 27, 2020 | COVID-19, Do the Right Thing: Thoughts on Quality, Fight the Good Fight, Nutrition & Wound Healing, Skin Perfusion Pressure (SPP)
If you are a wound management practitioner, then like me, you’ve continued to care for patients during the pandemic. It wasn’t easy before COVID-19 and it’s even harder now. My clinic is only able to see half the volume (due to the time required for COVID-19...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 19, 2020 | Do the Right Thing: Thoughts on Quality, Healthcare Payment Policy
Special guest blog post by Marissa Carter, PhD Predicting Healing on the First Visit (for venous ulcers and other wound types) There is a lot of interest in “predictive models” for chronic wounds and ulcers. The ideal predictive model can predict at the FIRST VISIT...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Feb 25, 2020 | Fight the Good Fight, Healthcare Payment Policy
The Wound Care Evidence Summit will take place in Washington, D.C. April 1-2. If you are involved in this area, you need to register now because spots are limited. The meeting will convene commercial and government payer medical directors, the FDA, NIH senior staff,...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jan 28, 2020 | Healthcare Payment Policy
I’ve talked to a lot of you lately and to save time, I have decided to write an open letter to manufacturers in the wound care space. This advice is free – which means no one will value it, but here is what I wish you were paying attention to: Medicare (at least)...
