Facts About Pressure Ulcers
The term “Pressure Ulcers” is designated as an entity of great importance throughout medical history pertaining to clinical care for patients who undergo Orthopaedic surgeries for hip dislocations or fractures. During the time of Egyptian dynasties, appreciation of personal and professional clinical observations within the Orthopaedic settings had been coherent in practice and delivery of care to patients however; this notion refers it to the 21st century health problems as pressure ulcers markedly affecting self-esteem and quality of life of patients. In United Kingdom, the incidences for patients developing pressure ulcers after major surgeries has been costing the country immensely higher finances for healthcare providers and estimated between 1.4 to 2.1 billion pounds per year. The average expenditure for National Health Services (NHS) is found to be equivalent to 4% attributed to the bulk of cost that is required to finance additional nursing care.
European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel
According to European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel, pressure ulcers are defined as the localized areas of skin damage and connective biological tissues that are caused by sustained application of pressure, sheering, friction between the surfaces or a combination of both. Immobility is the causative factor that predisposes the patients to become bed-bound or chair-ridden, which increases the risks for them to develop as they cannot reposition themselves at their will and also do not acknowledge the tissue ischemia so that they can ask to be adjusted according to their better body positions. In patients with loss of subsequent muscular mass and subcutaneous tissues, and alterations in connecting layers for dermis predispose to reduce cohesion, elasticity and facilitate to trigger inflammatory response at the contact site. The clinical guidelines illustrates that pressure ulcers develop as an after effect of high and sustained pressure on a specific anatomical site often a bony protrusion and are also called as bed sores or decubitis ulcers and are also characterized into two primary groups as Trochnateric and Intracapsular depending on the anatomic site it appears, and is classified on the basis of the level of tissue loss from stage-1 to stage-4.
Over the span of several years, the exclusive researches on prevention of pressure ulcers within United Kingdom in patients with hip fracture reveals a gap in knowledge based clinical practice that is needed to be addressed. The extent of the problem of increased incidences of pressure ulcers’ formation in patients’ presents an area of great interest for governmental as well as professional medical services in improving benchmarks for standard preventive care and management guidelines for pressure ulcers. There are multiple factors that are responsible for the formation of pressure ulcers. The incidence of hip fractures and hip surgery are directly correlated to the occurrences of pressure ulcers and contribute to high medical billing among geriatric population.
