Cath Lab Digest

Retrospective database review

  With regard to the article on topical oxygen (Blackman E, Moore C, Hyatt J, Railton R, Frye C. Topical wound oxygen therapy in the treatment of severe diabetic foot ulcers: a prospective controlled study. Ostomy Wound Manage. 2010;56(6):24–31), I am concerned that a nonrandomized, nonblinded trial was published in your journal. The results are meaningless in my practice, especially so because the study was paid for by the manufacturer.

  This paper will be quoted by third-party payors wanting to refuse hyperbaric oxygen therapy. This is a shame beca

Dear Editor,
     As noted by the authors of the article Serena TE, Bialas P. Persistence of bilayered living-cell therapy donor DNA 10 months after application: a case report. (Ostomy Wound Manage. 2009;55[10]18–22), 10 months is considerably longer persistence than previously reported in multiple studies. In six published studies involving 52 patients,^1-6 no Apligraf (Organogenesis, Canton, MA) cells were found (by RT-PCR) at 6 weeks following application and only one (a single study in patients treated for epidermolysis bullosa, the data of which the author conc

Dear Editor,

  I commend Clinical Editor Lia van Rijswijk for her editorial, "First, Do No Harm," that appeared in the March 2008 issue of Ostomy Wound Management. While she focused on the doctor's (un)cleanliness, I focused on his "certification." It seems to me that wound care credentialing is rolling out of Cracker Jack boxes – you, too, can be wound-care certified, a WOC-in-a-box.

  An ad in the latest Advance for Nurses reads, "It only takes one week to become certified in wound care." When I mentioned this to a colleague, he sarcastically responded,"Oh, I thought it only took a weekend." How low will we go? How long will it take before we put on the brakes and realize the impossibility of instant certification? And most importantly, how many patients will receive substandard care from these poorly prepared "experts"?

–Nancy Faller, RN, MSN, PhD, ET

Dear Editor,

Regarding the article, “The 10⁵ Bacterial Growth Guideline: Reassessing its Clinical Relevance in Wound Healing” (Ostomy/Wound Management. 2003;49[1]:44–53), the interrelationships among micro-organisms and host resistance are well-known and accepted, and the author correctly notes the need to understand these relationships in comprehending the complexities of soft tissue infections. However, his perusal of selected articles on quantitative bacteriology and its usefulness leaves the reader with several injudicious conclusions.

The two maj