King’s Daughters Medical Center is preparing to open a newdepartment that will have the capability to treat and heal old,worrisome wounds.

Set to open in early August, the hospital’s new Wound HealingCenter will be filled with the equipment and medical personnelnecessary to utilize hyperbaric medicine, a form of treatment thatuses pressurized oxygen to kill bacteria and rebuild the flesharound long-standing wounds.

Chief Development Officer Johnny Rainer said KDMC chose to investin the Wound Healing Center because of the high rate of diabetes,hyper tension and circulatory diseases in Southwest Mississippi -the conditions that can lead to lingering, sometimes untreatablewounds that the center is designed to heal.

“These diseases can create wounds that are very difficult to heal,even with constant treatment from conventional medicine,” Rainersaid. “A lot of the time, these wounds can lead to amputation.”

A major part of the Wound Healing Center’s medical abilities willcome from the presence of a pair of hyperbaric chambers – fullyenclosed, pressurized chambers that patients will be placed in fortreatment. Once a patient is in the chamber, it will be sealed andfilled with 100 percent oxygen at higher-than-normal pressures, aprocess that raises the amount of oxygen in the bloodstream andallows red blood cells to pass more easily into the wound and healit from the inside out.

Claustrophobic patients need not be alarmed, as the chambers areclear and include internal microphones for communication with themedical staff, and a television mounted above the chamber forrelaxation during treatment.

KDMC’s new emergency medicine physician, Dr. Jeffery Kraft – whowill refer patients to the Wound Healing Center as necessary fromhis position in the emergency room – has seen hyperbaric medicinein action.

“I’ve seen awful wounds, and literally I’ve seen them in two weeksheal to a point where the wound is completely granulated over withfresh tissue,” he said. “Oxygen under pressure, especially in thehuman body, improves blood cell function. It helps maintain thedestruction of infectious organisms.”

Kraft pointed out that pressured oxygen will also stimulate newblood vessel growth.

“That’s the reason they’re so good for diabetic ulcers,” he said.”When there’s low circulation, the body will not grow new bloodvessels in the area that needs them – that’s what makes thesewounds so hard to heal and can lead to amputation. Hyperbarictreatment is like turning the blood into a high-octanemixture.”

Kraft said hyperbaric medicine can be used to treat diabetic ulcersand pressure ulcers, infections and even Brown Recluse bites,which, he pointed out, currently lack effective treatment.

The Wound Healing Center will operate on an outpatient basis, withtreatments lasting typically one hour but varying depending on thesize and seriousness of the wound.

Rainer said the center is designed to have a panel of sixphysicians, with four of the spots already filled. All of the KDMCphysicians who will serve in the center will go through one week oftraining at Ohio State University and will report back once eachyear for continuing education, he said.

Rainer said KDMC invested almost $1 million in the Wound HealingCenter, with approximately $425,000 spent on renovating the 2,500square-foot Sleep Lab – which will continue to occupy the samebuilding – and constructing a 750 square-foot addition. Twohyperbaric chambers, which are due to be installed in the center intwo to three weeks, were purchased at the cost of $150,000each.

Director of Facilities Ronnie Killingsworth said the investment wasnot taken lightly. He said the creation of the Wound Healing Centerfollowed a pattern set forth by the National Healing Corp., theFlorida-based leader in hyperbaric medicine that operates similarclinics at more than 200 hospitals around the nation.

“We basically went into that building and tore it completely apartand patterned it after the National Healing Corp. format,”Killingsworth said of the renovations.

Killingsworth was also part of a KDMC team that traveled to Amoryto inspect the design and operation of a wound clinic at GilmoreMemorial Hospital.