Could Continuous Topical Oxygen Help Older Patients With Radiation Tissue Necrosis?

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Hello, I'm Doctor Windy Cole. I am the Director of Wound Care Research for Kent State University College of Podiatric Medicine. And I'm also the global Medical Director for Natrox Wound Care.
 
Our poster at SAWC Fall concentrated on a key series of patients that had undergone radiation for a cancerous lesion of the lower extremity. And it was followed up with either surgical excision or Mohs procedure. These patients were of advanced age, they were 85 years or older and they had chronic nonhealing wounds post–surgical intervention.
 
There are a variety of reasons why they probably develop these nonhealing wounds. We know that radiation will cause tissue necrosis and a decrease in perfusion to the skin and the area of surgical incision or excision. Also, again, these patients are of increased age. We know that collagen integrity decreases as we age and that could also be an obstacle to healing.
 
So all three of these patients entered into this case series where we applied topical oxygen therapy to these chronic nonhealing wounds. And amazingly enough, these wounds that hadn't gone on to heal for over a year. The median time to wound closure in this three-patient case series was 3.6 weeks.
 
The reason that we think topical oxygen therapy was so effective in this patient population is we know that the mechanism of action for topical oxygen therapy supports angiogenesis or new blood vessel formation, therefore bringing oxygen to the tissues and cellular components that we need for tissue repair and regeneration. And then also topical oxygen therapy has been shown to increase collagen production and also increase the robustness of collagen.
 
And we were able to support wound healing in this very difficult patient population. It's a small cohort but we hope to add to the successes with other patient cases.