Navigating Treatment Options for Treating Biofilm

In this video, Matt Regulski, DPM, FFPM RCPS (Glasgow), ABMSP, discusses navigating treatment options when biofilm is present within the wound, which he presented in his SAWC Fall 2021 poster abstract.

Transcript:

Dr. Matthew Regulski:  Hello. I'm Dr. Matthew Regulski. I'm the medical director for the Wound Institute of Ocean County, New Jersey, senior partner at Ocean County for Ankle Surgical Associates in Toms River, New Jersey.

Wound care clinicians, physicians, surgeons, nurses, PDAs, MPs, they're bombarded by the different products that are out there. Every product has what's called the 510(k). There are no randomized controlled trial data to show that these things actually can do all the things that they say they can do, particularly in the dressing field.

These are products that are out there that people say that they have anti‑biofilm capability. We'd like to test our products against everything that is out there that says that have the capabilities, so we can show the superiority of the product.

The X biotechnology is superior to anything that is on that market because of those three factors that I've talked about. Non‑toxic negates all those pathogens that are in there because biofilm bacteria is thousands and thousands of times more resistant to antibiotics.

Antibiotics do not heal wounds. If there's one RCT out there that shows taking oral antibiotics can heal wounds, please send it to me right away, because I'm sorry, there is not one that is out there. You can't get the flow rates high enough of antibiotics out of the plasma to get through biofilm without blowing out somebody's kidneys.

There are no resistance mechanisms to this because it's like artillery, which is bombing through the EPS and through the membranes of the bacteria and the fungus that are there. That's the significance they should take on all these different products.

How do you migrate through the weeds? You have to read the literature that is put forth out there and I encourage everybody.

The Wounds journal is a fantastic thing that will carry learning in a way that we have going on so that we have education for people. This is a heavy, heavy science field we're dealing with when you look at diabetic foot ulcers 47% mortality rate, venous leg ratios of 30% of those mortality rates, $720 billion spent 2019 on the treatment of diabetes and its related complications.

We have to avail ourselves of the top research out there and use those things that have the highest level of evidence based medicine.