Wound Care Atrium Health

If you have a wound that’s healing more slowly than you’d expect, it might be time to consult a wound care specialist. Our comprehensive wound healing program offers advanced solutions to treat and prevent open wounds, guard against infection and get you back to enjoying life.

Finding Solutions to Treat Your Wound

At Atrium Health, you'll receive high-quality wound care from providers specially trained in:

• Assessing and treating the most complicated non-healing wounds
• Getting to the root cause of why a wound won't heal to devise the right treatment plan from the start

Our highly skilled and experienced wound care team consistently heals more wounds – and heals them faster – than many other wound centers in the country.

We work together with you and your primary care doctor, surgeon or other healthcare provider to develop a complete care plan to heal your wound and improve your quality of life.

Specialized Wound Care

We know that having a wound that won't close can be worrisome and affect your quality of life. We can help.

Here's what you can expect when you come to one of our wound centers:

• Expertise
  Our wound care teams have specialized training in managing and assessing wounds of all types. With access to an ongoing national database that tracks wound treatments and outcomes, we have access to the latest and best therapies.
• Quality Outcomes
  We have consistently excellent outcomes for wound healing.
  
  • We successfully close 94 percent of the wounds we treat, higher than the national healing rate of 91 percent
  • We're skilled at treating even the most complex cases
  • We prevent limb loss on a daily basis
  • We heal wounds faster than the national average – often in fewer than 30 days
• Convenience
  We offer easy access to our wound care services, including:
  
  • Seven outpatient locations across the Charlotte area
  • Same-day or next-day appointments for most cases
  • Specialized care without a referral, unless your insurance requires one
• Compassionate, Experienced Nursing Care
  Our dedicated nursing staff regularly meets with and cares for you based on your personalized care plan. In addition to providing excellent wound care and management, our nurses will:
  • Teach you how to care for your wound in between visits to promote healing and protect it from further injury
  • Talk with you about daily activities that can affect your wound
  • Offer hope and support, often making you feel like family
• Coordinated Care
  Effectively healing open wounds is a team effort. As a partner in your care, we will:
  • Work hand-in-hand with your other doctors and healthcare providers
  • Manage your case, identifying any barriers to healing and making sure all of your needs are met
  • Recommend other support services to give you the best possible outcome (for example, nutritional support, quitting smoking, diabetes or managing blood vessel conditions)

Wounds We Treat

In general, a wound is considered non-healing or chronic if it hasn’t:

• Started to heal in two weeks
• Completely healed in four weeks

Some common types of non-healing wounds that we treat include:

• Diabetes-related ulcers on the legs or feet
• Surgery-related wounds (for example, breast reconstruction, C-sections, or skin flaps and grafts)
• Radiation tissue damage from cancer treatment
• Chronic bone infections (osteomyelitis)
• Pressure-related ulcers
• Venous (vein) ulcers
• Minor burns

Certain conditions and health habits may also contribute to poor wound healing. Some examples include:

• Diabetes
• Heart disease
• Poor circulation or blood flow (called venous disease)
• Nerve damage
• Injuries due to trauma
• Weakened immune system (for example, people with certain cancers, blood disorders or autoimmune problems)
• Smoking
• Being inactive
• Poor nutrition

Our experts take the time to carefully assess your wound and understand what might be making it worse to develop a care plan that gets you the best results.

Wound Treatments

Your treatment program will be tailored to your needs. Our goal is to help:

• Promote healing
• Improve or eliminate your symptoms
• Get you back to being able to perform usual daily activities and hobbies and improve your quality of life

At each visit we will:

• Carefully examine and measure your wound to track your healing
• Adjust your treatment plan to give your wound the best chance of healing and guard against infection or other complications

We offer comprehensive wound-healing therapies. For example:

• Advanced dressings promote healing by:
  • Applying some form of compression (when needed)
  • Absorbing drainage from the wound
  • Preventing or fighting against infection
• Debridement aids in removing damaged tissue from a wound, readying the area for new, healthy tissue and skin growth.
• Hyperbaric therapy helps get more oxygen to organs and tissues in your body, which is critical for healing and fighting infections. For patients who qualify, we do this by using a hyperbaric oxygen chamber which combines pressure and oxygen to aid in healing.
• Negative pressure wound therapy involves a portable device that's used to drain unhealthy fluids and bacteria from the wound and reduce swelling. This therapy can also help pull the edges of the wound together to assist with healing.
• Advanced cellular-based tissue products can be used to fill the wound and encourage tissue growth.
• Offloading casting is a type of flexible casting that helps keep pressure off the foot to improve healing and is particularly helpful for treating foot ulcers.

Wound Care Locations

Atrium Health has seven North Carolina wound care locations: