Interdisciplinary Wound Team: 2006-2016 - A Ten Years Single-Center Experience

Objective: Postoperative wound healing problems after cardiac surgery are rare. However, patients with these complications need a prolongation und complex therapy. Also the wound care of chronic wounds is an important point in specialized wound management. For that reason we founded in 2006 an interdisciplinary Wound team. Two cardiac surgeons are specialized in wound management and two nurses for diabetic and special wound care are involved. Actually this team take care of all patients with acute and chronical wounds. The question is how effective is such a team?

Methods: Retrospectively we analyzed the database of our cardiac center. We investigated: quality of wound care, time expenses, wound healing rate, patient's satisfaction, length of hospitalization and cost effectiveness. We compare all these points before and after we founded the wound team.

Results: All points changed positively in relationship to the time before wound team exists. For instance: The time expenses were significantly shortened (31.3 ± 7.2 vs. 17.4 ± 5.8 days). A higher wound healing rate could be achieved (within 30 days: 72.3 vs. 90.4%). The patient's satisfaction was significantly increased (results of a patient survey: 71.1% before and 93.5% after team founding).

Conclusion: An interdisciplinary wound team is a very effective tool for the optimization of wound care. Another interesting point is the important role of such a team in prevention and analysis of wound treatment. From patients perspective this team is very accepted and helpful for motivation in this difficult situation. Further studies are needed to verify these initial results continue.