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By David Blymire, Sentinel Reporter

Last updated: Thursday, June 14, 2007 10:47 AM EDT

A new wound center in Carlisle will use specialized healing techniques, including a hyperbaric chamber, on patients with hard-to-heal wounds.

Carlisle Regional Medical Center is expected to open the center July 2 at 366 Alexander Spring Road, a new building directly across the street from the hospital.

The new center is expected to occupy about one-third of the 9,000-square-foot building.

Patients who could benefit from the treatment at the center include anyone with wounds that have not healed as quickly as expected, says Dr. James Hardesty, medical director at the new facility.

They could include pressure ulcers, venous ulcers, diabetic wounds, or residual affects from radiation therapy, he says.

“These chronic wounds that will not respond to therapy — we have the services to deal with it,” says Faye Gardner, a registered nurse and program director at the center.

Chronic wound cured

Hardesty knew of a man who injured his lower leg in a Jeep accident and suffered with the ankle-to-knee wound for 50 years, including seeping, foul-smelling drainage.

“His lifestyle revolved around caring for that,” Hardesty says.

The man had tried a variety of treatments, including skin grafts and skin substitutes, but nothing worked, Hardesty says.

That’s just one example of the type of patient the new center will serve.

Hardesty says the center will have four physicians on duty daily representing a variety of specialties, including podiatry, plastic surgery, orthopedics and vascular surgery.

Healing techniques include specialized dressings or skin grafts. Depending on the type of wound, some patients may benefit from the hyperbaric chamber.

Patients using the glass-enclosed chamber would spend about 90 minutes at a time inside breathing 100 percent oxygen, more than 20 times the amount at sea level under normal atmospheric conditions.

“When it’s compressed that way, they get higher amounts of oxygen into the tissues,” Hardesty says. “We know tissue needs oxygen to heal. With chronic wounds, they’re not getting enough oxygen to heal.”

Hardesty cites an example of the type of a patient who can benefit from the chamber — a man whose prostate cancer is treated with radiation therapy. The radiation brings an unintended consequence — chronic bladder trouble that keeps the man frequently running to the bathroom. But the chamber can bring healing to the bladder and relief to the patient.

Hardesty says the chamber is the first in central Cumberland County. The nearest other hyperbaric chambers can be found at the Fredericksen Outpatient Center in Hampden Township and in Frederick, Md.

Hardesty, a general and vascular surgeon, has been with CRMC more than three years. He says his previous hospital in Huntingdon opened a wound center and he became director there for one year.

“I’m excited,” he says. “It’s going to be good.”