Can an Advanced Collagen Powder Close Non-Healing Wounds After Amputation?

My name is Alton Johnson. I'm a DPM and also certified wound care specialist, currently practicing at the University of Michigan, out in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I work as a podiatrist, a wound care specialist for the both inpatient, outpatient services for the hospital system. So I have a poster that I'm showcasing at SAWC Fall, basically using advanced collagen powder for a chronic non-healing wound. So it is a single case study. So the reason why I thought it was pretty good evidence in presentation, because the type of case it was. So I had a gentleman in his mid eighties, or early eighties really, have a dissecting aorta. So he threw out shower emboli into his toes, end up with blue toe syndrome. You had to get an open aortic replacement, and that was taken care of by the cardiothoracic team. But then he was sent to me for the blue toe syndrome. But the blue toe syndrome turned into gangrene and the patient did not want to have a TMA.

So we came up with a plan. Of course some of the toes started to auto amputate. Some of the toes I had to amputate. And some of the amputation sites were not healing because, as you can... Based on the patient's comorbidities, PAD shower emboli didn't have the best vessels to heal these areas. So we had several spots, maybe two or three spots, on the wounds that were not healing. Then I finally got those healed, but then I ended up with one spot on the dorsal foot that was not healing, that was delayed healing, that I'd been using traditional collagen products on. He wasn't too fond of using skin grafts, mainly for religious purposes, things like that. And I respect that. But he wanted to do conservative wound care. And so we decided to move forward with the advanced collagen powder that I had researched on and reached out to the company and was able to get it secured through our inventory at the hospital.

And we used it for 28 days and patient was thrilled. And he was actually able to heal his wound without having to go back to any surgery. As a wound care provider, you wanted to have a repertoire as a podiatrist, who for surgical wounds, have a repertoire of products that you can use in certain conditions. And the good thing about this particular product, it was micronized, so it actually could use and place it inside of the wound and in tumbling areas, cause it was a tumbling wound, and just kind of pack it in there instead of getting one that's a sheet. Trying to rip it apart and hydrate it and pack it in there and use a cotton tip applicator. But otherwise, try to get that surface area. Cause you have something micronized, you have enough surface area to cover and basically you can pack that in the wound. And I think that's really what helped. It's just the actual delivery of the product into the wound. So the thing you're just kind of thinking outside of the box for certain wounds. So I was basically still using collagen, just using a different type of collagen. And for a chronic non-healing wound.