One of the most common complications that we see in the wound care and tissue regeneration world is infection.\u00a0 Unlike other pathology, diagnosing a wound infection is not as simple as ordering one lab or performing one test.\u00a0 For example, when a cardiologist uses angiography to take pictures of your heart blood vessels, he or she may with near-certainty determine whether you have coronary artery disease.\u00a0 There is no such simple “one-stop-shop” test for a wound infection.\u00a0 In addition, there are many “in-between” states with regards to infection or no infection.\u00a0 It is not binary.\u00a0 All wounds have bacteria, but not all bacteria cause an infection.\u00a0 Some may be symbiotic “normal” skin flora.\u00a0 Some may cause excessive inflammation but not an outright infection.\u00a0 Finally, some may colonize into healthy tissue, either superficially or deep, and cause an outright infection.\u00a0 Thus, the medical practitioner must be clinically astute and be able to synthesize many different forms of information.\u00a0 First and foremost, one must take a good history and perform a focused wound physicial examination.\u00a0 This takes skill and experience with wound healing, such as is possessed by the doctors and nurse practioners at Wound Care Experts.\u00a0 We may ask you about increased pain, bleeding, drainage, for friability of your wound.\u00a0 We may ask if you have noticed pus in the wound.\u00a0 Has there been a new odor or a change in color of the drainage?\u00a0 All of this is pertinent information.\u00a0 We will examine the wound and compare it the the previous appearance of the wound in our image database.\u00a0 If it is warranted, we will acquire NIRS Spectroscopy images to assess your blood flow and Moleculyte images to look for “bacterial colonies,” known as biofilm.\u00a0 To my knowledge, our group is the ONLY one in the Las Vegas area to have access to both of these advanced technologies.\u00a0 If we suspect a deeper infection, such as in the muscle or bone, we may send you for further imaging such as a CT or MRI.\u00a0 If we suspect an infection, we want to know what bacteria are the cause so that we might treat you\u00a0 appropriately.\u00a0 One option is a traditional culture, where we swab for bacteria and grow them on a petri dish in medium.\u00a0 This technique, however, has its limitations.\u00a0 Usually, this technique will only find live, active, replicating, and free-floating bacteria.\u00a0 Sometimes, these bacteria are not the ones that cause your infection.\u00a0 It may be due to the bacteria in a “bacteria colony” called a biofilm.\u00a0 These bacteria are often imbedded in a jelly-like substance and not replicating, which makes it hard for a traditional culture to quantify them.\u00a0 We can use a special technique called PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, which amplifies bits of the bacteria’s genetic material.\u00a0 This can then be used to identify the bacteria.\u00a0 More importantly, we can look at this genetic material and see if the bacteria possess any antibiotic resistance genes.\u00a0 This can help us avoid antibiotics against which this bug has developed defences.\u00a0 All this information and more is used to diagnose a wound infection at Wound Care Experts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the most common complications that we see in the wound care and tissue regeneration world is infection.\u00a0 Unlike other pathology, diagnosing a wound infection is not as simple as ordering one lab or performing one test.\u00a0 For example,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n