Tag Archive for: wound care

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How to Treat Bite Wounds in Dogs

Small dog on a vet’s tableBite wounds are one of the most common reasons dogs see their veterinarians. If a dog is bitten or gets into a fight with another dog, this is what needs to happen first:

  1. As the dog’s owner, stay calm. Panic will only make the situation worse.
  2. Don’t get between your dog and the other dog(s) to break up the fight. You could also get bit in the process.
  3. Focus on getting your dog away from the other dog. A loud clap or another distracting sound may help get your dog’s attention so you can call or signal him to you.
  4. Don’t scream at the other dog, as this could make the situation feel even more threatening to the dogs.
  5. Ask the other dog owner (if present) if their dog is up to date on their vaccines. If the pet owner isn’t present or the other dog involved is a stray, try to get pictures at the very least.
  6. Once your dog is safely away from the dog who bit him, contact your vet immediately or head to your nearest emergency animal hospital.

Why Do Dogs Bite?

Biting is often part of play for puppies. In adult dogs, multiple motives or causes for biting can stem from competitive issues or reactions to perceived threats. Additionally, several factors influence the severity of a dog bite and the health risk it can pose to a pet. This is why seeing your veterinarian as quickly as possible after your dog has experienced a bite is a good idea.

Treating Bite Wounds in Dogs

Dog bites can cause significant injury to the skin and soft tissues. A dog’s teeth and jaws are powerful; a bite wound can result in torn muscles and skin. Not all bite wounds are big, though. Just because a bite wound is small doesn’t mean it isn’t a cause for concern. Minor bites can heal themselves quickly but, in doing so, can trap bacteria in the wound that can result in an abscess.

Infections are the primary concern for any dog bite, but other serious issues can develop if not treated properly. Typically, a vet will examine and thoroughly clean the bite wound and then provide a broad-spectrum antibiotic to help fight infection and prevent further complications with the wound site. Or, the vet can use Vetrix’s Healion Amniotic Wound Matrix as part of their patient’s bite wound treatment plan. 

Healion is a decellularized amniotic membrane supplied in fine, dry, sterilized white powder form for veterinary use. Healion amniotic wound matrix leverages the natural healing properties of the amnion to modulate inflammation and create an environment conducive to rapid cell migration.

You apply it to the wound site and appropriately bandage it to create a sterile healing environment. The bite should be re-examined every 4-5 days, and a single application is usually sufficient.

How To Help A Dog Heal After A Bite

As a vet, your priority is preventing your patient’s bite wound from getting infected. Start treating bite wounds with a fast and effective treatment option that makes patients and clients happy. Add Healion to your medical toolkit today. Order now.

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How to Provide Superior Wound Care Treatment

BioSIS wound dressing photolarge copyAny veterinarian worth their salt knows that providing superior wound care treatment starts with assessing the overall stability of the animal. Once the patient is stable, the next step is administering first aid for the wound as soon as safely possible. Your treatment should follow the fundamentals of debridement, infection or inflammation control, and moisture balance. Success depends on taking the correct approach and deciding whether to manage the wound as open or closed.

Before considering surgery, veterinarians looking for a more effective wound treatment should explore Healion Amniotic Matrix. The solution is an easy-to-use, sterilized powder that promotes the healing of wound sites.

Provide Superior Wound Care with Healion Wound Matrix

When choosing wound care solutions for your patients, protecting the wound sight from further contamination and trauma is often a top concern. This is where Healion Wound Matrix can help, especially in situations where a wound cannot or should not be closed. Healion is a decellularized amniotic membrane supplied in fine, dry, sterilized white powder form for veterinary use. It leverages the natural healing properties of amnion to modulate inflammation and create an environment conducive to rapid cell migration. All you must do is puff the solution onto the wound bed and cover it with a non-adherent bandage.

Once administered, and as we touched on at the beginning of this post, it’s advised you consider the following four things while caring for your wound patient:

  1. Giving the wound proper support
  2. Maintaining proper moisture levels
  3. Mitigating infection risk
  4. The phases of wound healing

If these four factors aren’t considered when bandaging and monitoring your patient, you might not see the healing you expect. (Remember pain management throughout the phases of recovery, too.)

Healion Wound Matrix serves as a wound care solution where open wound management or delayed wound closure is the best course of action for the patient. Healion is uniquely designed to enable veterinarians to provide superior wound care treatment and is indicated for the management of wounds, including:

 

  • Partial wounds
  • Full-thickness wounds
  • Surgical wounds
  • Trauma wounds
  • Draining wounds

Do You Want to Provide Superior Wound Care Treatment?

It’s time to join top veterinarians using the best regenerative wound care technology and provide your patients with faster and more effective treatment options. Healion Wound Matrix provides an ideal healing environment and flexibility in treating both acute and chronic wounds, and it’s affordable.

Healion is cost-effective and packaged to fit procedural needs. Learn about Healion Wound Matrix pricing (available in 6-pack, 12-pack, and 24-pack options).

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What is Veterinary Regenerative Medicine?

eye drops for petsVeterinary regenerative medicine started in the mid-1990s when bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) were used to treat tendon injuries in horses. Over the last 30 years, veterinarians have made significant advances in developing medications for animals using regenerative medicine to treat a variety of diseases. But before we get into what you can treat with veterinary regenerative medicine, we want to ensure that all readers understand what veterinary regenerative medicine is.

According to the FDA, “Veterinary regenerative medicine is an active area of research for developing new cell and tissue therapies for animals. Such therapies are called animal cells, tissues, and cell-and-tissue based products, or ACTPs for short.”

ACTPs refer to products used in animals that contain, consist of, or derive from cells or tissues. Some terms you may hear associated with this include:

  • Stem Cells (SCT)
  • Differentiated cells
  • Tissues such as blood
  • Platelet-rich plasma (PRP)
  • Amnion

Regenerative veterinary therapies elicit a therapeutic response that stimulates healing in tissues. They are used to home in on sites and rejuvenate damaged tissue. Regenerative therapies are also helpful in combating pain in dogs with orthopedic injuries.

What Can You Treat With Veterinary Regenerative Medicine?

Regenerative medicine is recommended as a primary treatment for specific conditions or used jointly with surgical procedures. At Vetrix, we provide products that harness the natural capabilities of the patient’s existing cells by providing a biological scaffold into which progenitor cells embed. Once the patient’s cells have migrated into the native scaffolding, the cells lay down their extracellular matrix which, in turn, shares signals to differentiate into the appropriate tissue. With this site-specific healing capability, Vetrix® can fully regenerate tissue ranging from:

  • Skin
  • Muscular defects
  • Intestinal lining
  • And others

Our regenerative veterinary solutions are also helpful for the following:

  • Ophthalmology
  • Neurology
  • Surgical Applications
  • Oncology
  • Wound management

One of our most popular products is BioSIS ECM Technology. BioSIS provides a natural scaffold that works with and encourages your patient’s (pet’s) natural healing process. A few typical surgical applications you can use BioSIS for include:

  • Gastrointestinal soft tissue repair
  • Thoracic wall repair
  • Body wall and hernia repair
  • Degloving injuries
  • Mass removals
  • Alternative to skin grafts

Learn more about Vetrix BioSIS Technology.

 

Additionally, Vetrix also provides veterinarians with another regenerative medicine to treat wounds. Healion Amniotic Wound Matrix is a regenerative option that utilizes the natural healing properties of amnion to treat patients with severe wounds. Click here to learn more.

 

Vetrix® is the leading provider of veterinary regenerative medicine. As a world supplier of innovative veterinary products, we enable veterinarians to provide exceptional treatment for their patients.

We’re always happy to answer questions about our products, what we do, and how we do it. Contact us today if you’re a veterinarian interested in using regenerative medicine in your patient treatment plans. Contact Vetrix.

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Dealing with Chronic Wounds: Wound Care 101

Caring for and treating patients with chronic wounds can sometimes be frustrating and discouraging. You so desperately want to give them the best wound care possible and see them live their lives to the fullest, but nothing seems to offer a permanent solution. You may be able to improve your results with the BioSIS method.

Using Porcine Small Intestinal Submucosa (SIS) for Wound Care

Researchers say that using porcine SIS to treat chronic wounds has improved healing time and permanency. Due to its makeup, an acellular, biological extracellular matrix (ECM), porcine small intestinal submucosa draws in the host’s cells to attach and multiply. This aids in quicker, more permanent healing.

Growth compounds like collagen, elastin, glycosaminoglycans, and proteoglycans help with the healing process. And it’s not just one cell that’s attracted to the matrix. Porcine SIS attracts numerous cell types for a healthy, diverse layer formation. Since it takes more than growth factors to aid in the healing process, it’s fortunate that SIS has been found to decrease matrix metalloproteinases (MMP) activity. These endogenous proteolytic enzyme levels usually rise with chronic wounds.

Even better, the mechanical properties of multi-layer SIS are stronger and degrade slower as opposed to single-layer SIS. Pertaining to the repair of different kinds of wound types, these two SIS products provide flexibility when choosing a biologically-active ECM.

1-Layer VS. 3-Layer SIS

When choosing between 1-layer SIS and 3-layer SIS, studies show a thicker matrix may be preferable. One study done in diabetic mice showed the 3-layer SIS didn’t require application as frequently as the 1-layer matrix. Where both SIS layers were applied to full-thickness wounds on the day of wounding and three days later, the thicker matrix showed larger sections of unincorporated layers—meaning there was still significant space in the matrix for cells to mitigate.

This is good to know for patients that may have owners who live farther away and travel a greater distance for appointments or cannot afford frequent applications.

More Reasons to Consider the SIS Method

Besides reducing MMP levels, you may also want to consider the SIS method for wound care because it contains proteins that foster cell attachment and growth factor binding sites, sequester matrix-degrading enzymes, and enhance cellular filtration into damaged tissue. In addition to these positive effects, it also supports new blood vessel growth, which is vital to wound recovery.

Overall, small intestinal submucosa has been found to not only increase healing in wounds but also the rate at which the wounds recover compared to the standard of wound care.
If you’d like to further discuss this method of wound care or have any questions, please contact us. We would be happy to speak with you! And if you’d like to read more on topics like this, visit our blog page.

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A Guide to Managing Wounds for Veterinary Patients

Any successful wound management can be achieved through the correct application process and products. Managing wounds for your patients can be made easy in a variety of ways, and we have provided you with a handful of tips to make it smoother and more successful for your practice. 

#1: Wound Irrigation 

This can be effectively determined by the amount of solution or product used on the patient, rather than the kind of solution or product. There is no exact formula or measurement that fits each patient, which is why each patient should be treated uniquely and individually. 

#2: Irrigation Pressure

By applying pressure to the site, bacteria can easily be removed from the wound and not cause more damage to the surrounding tissue. 

#3: Debridement 

If there are any foreign objects located in the wound or in the surrounding areas, assess the necrotic tissue. Evaluate if it should be removed, but—if the tissue viability is questionable—then wait and reassess in the coming days. 

#4: Topical Agents 

Topical creams or our Healion Amniotic Particulate Matrix can be applied at the right time to the wound, and can play an essential role in the healing process. 

#5: Contact Bandages 

After the topical agents or the healion matrix are applied, cover the site with a bandage to ensure a protected healing environment. 

Healing Process 

The ultimate goal of restoration and healing for the epithelial surface can take time, and often has different phases. 

The first phase is the inflammation and debridement phase, which lasts three to five days after the wound has occurred. By draining the site, killing bacteria, getting rid of debris, and applying topical creams, the site will settle down and the healing process can truly start. 

The second phase occurs from day four to 12, generally speaking. During this time, the wound closes, and tissue is regenerated. 

The last phase is the maturation phase, which begins when collagen orients stress lines. This phase doesn’t have a specific timeline due to the different kinds of wounds, with some deeper or more severe than others. The strength of the skin can be healed by about 10% at two weeks, 25% by four weeks, and 80% by a couple of months.

Contact Us

Contact us today to talk with one of our representatives about the ways you can implement successful and productive healing in your veterinary practice. Managing your patients’ wounds is a quintessential aspect of your practice, therefore it should not be neglected. Head to our website today to learn more!

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Vetrix’s Healion Amniotic Wound Matrix

Treating wounds is part of everyday life in a veterinary practice. Vets encounter different types of injury daily from accidental wounds to surgical or recurring wounds, all requiring different types of wound management according to the patient. 

Supporting wounds and offering the best in regenerative technology can ensure that the healing time is cut down and the patient is on the right track. The Vetrix Healion amniotic wound matrix is paving the way for regenerative medicine. 

What Is the Healion Amniotic Wound Matrix? 

The wound matrix developed by Vetrix is a regenerative decellularized amniotic membrane; the material consists of collagen and an extracellular matrix. The matrix is rich in proteins, laminins, and proteoglycans. 

The matrix stimulates healing and growth of the dermis while ensuring that wounds heal faster and better with fewer complications. Naturally occurring growth factors within the matrix stimulate the regeneration of the epidermis and offer protection at the wound site. 

The Benefits Of Vetrix Wound Matrix

There are many benefits to using an amniotic wound matrix. Reducing your patient’s healing time can significantly reduce the risk of infection and complications that could arise from prolonged wound management. 

  • Setting the right environment – The Vetrix Healion creates the perfect healing environment. The amniotic matrix sets the healing environment right, allowing tissues to repair effectively and efficiently. 
  • Sterile – The sterile applicator ensures that you are not inserting anything into the wound that could compromise healing. 
  • Ease of use – Healion is packaged in a unique dispenser; the ergonomic design is created for ease of use and allows hard-to-treat areas to be accessed with ease.
  • Cost-effective – Faster healing wounds cost less. The Vetrix matrix is a cost-effective solution for your practice’s wound management needs. By reducing the need for patients to return, they save on pricey wound maintenance trips to your practice. 
  • Single application – The wound matrix is efficient enough to be used in a single application in most cases. More complex wounds might require an additional application of the Vetrix Healion; however, a single application is needed for most injuries. 
  • Open wound care – The matrix modulates inflammation and stimulates a healing environment. 

Investing in wound care can resolve some of the most complicated wounds, allowing animals to return to their regular lives sooner, reducing stress and frustration for veterinary practices, owners, and the animals themselves. 

If you have any concerns or want any additional information – get in touch with Vetrix; we are happy to answer any questions and walk you through the Healion Wound Matrix.

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