My father is in a rehabilitation facility due to a fractured hip from a fall. He has developed a bedsore on his backside, which he says it's very painful. They come and turn him every 2 hours so he is not always lying on it. He also has a recliner.
wouldn't it help if some air got to the wound? I thought if he was lying on his left side for example, and even if someone made a little hole in the back of the depends where the sore it, that might help. if he has an accident the urine won't go to the back will it?
any help is appreciated. thanks!!!
Fly maggots have been known for centuries to help debride and heal wounds. Maggot therapy was first introduced in the USA in 1931 and was routinely used there until the mid-1940s in over 300 hospitals. With the advent of antimicrobiols, maggot therapy became rare until the early 1990s, when it was re-introduced in the USA, UK, and Israel. The objective of this study was to assess the efficacy of maggot therapy for the treatment of intractable, chronic wounds and ulcers in long-term hospitalized patients in Israel.
METHODS:
Twenty-five patients, suffering mostly from chronic leg ulcers and pressure sores in the lower sacral area, were treated in an open study using maggots of the green bottle fly, Phaenicia sericata. The wounds had been present for 1-90 months before maggot therapy was applied. Thirty-five wounds were located on the foot or calf of the patients, one on the thumb, while the pressure sores were on the lower back. Sterile maggots (50-1000) were administered to the wound two to five times weekly and replaced every 1-2 days. Hospitalized patients were treated in five departments of the Hadassah Hospital, two geriatric hospitals, and one outpatient clinic in Jerusalem. The underlying diseases or the causes of the development of wounds were venous stasis (12), paraplegia (5), hemiplegia (2), Birger's disease (1), lymphostasis (1), thalassemia (1), polycythemia (1), dementia (1), and basal cell carcinoma (1). Subjects were examined daily or every second day until complete debridement of the wound was noted.
RESULTS:
Complete debridement was achieved in 38 wounds (88.4%); in three wounds (7%), the debridement was significant, in one (2.3%) partial, and one wound (2.3%) remained unchanged. In five patients who were referred for amputation of the leg, the extremities was salvaged after maggot therapy.
CONCLUSIONS:
Maggot therapy is a relatively rapid and effective treatment, particularly in large necrotic wounds requiring debridement and resistant to conventional treatment and conservative surgical intervention.
This is a hospital remedy in New Orleans. Sounds awful, but it does a good job! Even your MD will need to research this! persist for good job.
There is a powdered product that you can get online called Decubamine. You add it to their food or smoothies and it also speeds up the healing process. It is expensive but worth it.
Good luck.
It is very important to change positions every 2 hours & to keep the pressure off the sore.
There are several kinds of apparatuses to keep the pressure off the area.
Ask for assistance in the facility.
The visiting nurse told us to put liberal...LIBERAL...amounts of Lantiseptic on it. It's an extremely effective moisture barrier. The pain was gone in a couple of days. The sore (it hadn't opened up yet) was gone in a week.
I would call his doctor in a heartbeat to see what he recommends. If he's relying on the doctor at the nursing home, I would want to speak to him personally. (If it's like the nursing home mom was rehabbed in, the nurses try to shield the doctor. But he can't hide from meeee. ;)
I wish you good luck. Pain is a horrible thing to live with and good on you that you are asking questions and watching out for him.