2012
_NEWS Health Studies

Better Healing
Researchers at the College of Medicine have developed a non-invasive device to measure the oxygenation of wounds, a technique that could improve patient outcomes–and save money, too.

_Michael Weingarten

Weingarten is the medical director of the Hahnemann Hospital Comprehensive Wound Healing Program and the Drexel University College of Medicine Non-Invasive Vascular Laboratory.

It has long been believed that a decrease in the surface size of a wound is an appropriate indication of how well the wound is healing. But scientific literature reveals that this is not the case, especially in regard to irregularly shaped wounds. In fact, a decrease in wound size only has a 58 percent correlation to actual healing.

With this in mind, researchers at the Drexel University College of Medicine and the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems–led by Dr. Michael S. Weingarten–have developed a device that can improve the assessment of wound healing, allowing physicians to treat and manage chronic wounds more effectively.