Oakwood Hospital Expands Wound Care Services with New Site

Submitted by Oakwood Healthcare Inc.

Oakwood Healthcare now has a second location that offers advanced wound care treatments and hyperbaric oxygen therapy to patients suffering from severe burns, open sores and other chronic wounds.

A new Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Medicine Center is now open at 18100 Oakwood Boulevard in Dearborn, across the street from the Oakwood Hospital & Medical Center, effectively doubling the capacity to provide those services. 

Similar to the Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Medicine Center located at Oakwood Heritage Hospital in Taylor, the new location features four individualized hyperbaric chambers, plasma television sets and and examination rooms for patients. 

“We’re excited to be able to offer this additional facility to the community,” said Robert Jones, director of the Oakwood Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Medicine Center. “This new site—and our dedicated physicians and support staff—will support a growing need for advanced wound healing technology in the communities we serve.” 

The facility offers wound consultation and evaluation, specialty wound dressings, compression therapy, advanced treatment of skin, wound and bone infections—including antibiotic therapy—as well as negative pressure wound therapy and patient and family education in addition to Hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

“We treat wounds that just can’t be cured at a regular doctor’s office,” said Dr. Steven Pearl, medical director of the center.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a medical treatment that uses 100 percent oxygen in a pressurized setting to promote and improve healing of chronic wounds such as diabetic ulcers, radiation injuries, compromised skin grafts, severe burns, skin grafts and more. Patients are referred to the center, usually if they have a wound that will not heal with regular treatment within 30 days. 

“The pressurized oxygen really stimulates immunological phenomenon,” Pearl said. 

Treatments are typically about two hours long, which is why each individual chamber is connected to a plasma screen television with a Netflix account. Patients often require multiple treatments; it is not uncommon for them to be treated daily for several weeks. 

Pearl has worked in the hyperbaric and wound care field for more than a decade. He started the hyperbaric and wound care service at Crittendon Hospital when he was the medical director of the emergency department there. He said he was very pleased with the new facility at Oakwood because it features the latest advancements in hyperbaric treatment. 

“This is a relatively new specialty of science,” he said. “We have the opportunity to be on the cusp of this new technology.” 

The Dearborn facility is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday-Friday. The Taylor location is also open on Saturdays.