Pressure ulcers, also called decubitus ulcers, are a common challenge of humanity and are exceptionally difficult to heal. They are wounds that are initiated by relatively short periods of pressure on the skin that blocks blood circulation causing the skin and underlying tissues to die, leading to an open wound. Pressure release can prevent further tissue degeneration, and some ulcers heal and ...

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ regulations regarding nonpayment for hospital-acquired conditions such as pressure ulcers have prompted a marked increase in focus on preventive care. Our hospital also used this change in payment policy as an opportunity to strengthen our pressure ulcer prevention practices. We used an 8-spoke prevention wheel to develop and implement practice chan...

DESCRIPTION The patient is a 53-year-old man with paraplegia, who has developed a sacral pressure ulcer after being bedridden in the supine position. The patient presented for debridement and reconstruction of the ulcer.

AIM This paper reports a systematic review conducted to determine the effectiveness of the use of risk assessment scales for pressure ulcer prevention in clinical practice, degree of validation of risk assessment scales, and effectiveness of risk assessment scales as indicators of risk of developing a pressure ulcer. BACKGROUND Pressure ulcers are an important health problem. The best strateg...

Hospital acquired pressure ulcers (HAPU) are serious, debilitating, and preventable complications in all inpatient populations. Despite evidence of the development of pressure ulcers in the pediatric population, minimal research has been done. Based on observations gathered during quarterly HAPU audits, bedside nursing staff recognized trends in pressure ulcer locations that were not captured u...

The purpose of this study was to examine Brazilian nursing students knowledge of pressure ulcers. Third- and fourth-year undergraduate baccalaureate students at a public university in Brazil (N = 83) were asked to provide demographic information, identify extracurricular activities (eg, reading journals and articles and using the Internet to enhance comprehension of pressure ulcer care), and c...

PURPOSE This study was done to identify the time interval to pressure ulcer and to determine the optimal time interval for position change depending on pressure ulcer risk in patients using foam mattress in intensive care units. METHODS The Braden scale score, occurrence of pressure ulcers and position change intervals were assessed with 56 patients admitted to an intensive care unit from Apr...

This retrospective study examined the validity of the commonly used serum albumin level as an indicator of nutrition status of patients with pressure ulcer(s), particularly because the serum albumin level is affected by various factors and may not be specific to malnutrition. Specifically, we investigated whether nutrition supply or inflammation affects the serum albumin level in 82 patients wi...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to assess whether there are racial and ethnic disparities in the time to development of a pressure ulcer and number of pressure ulcer treatments in individuals aged 65 and older after nursing home admission. METHOD Multi-level predictors of time to a pressure ulcer from three national surveys were analyzed using Cox proportional hazards regression for...