Currently, there is a wide variety of complex wounds: pressure, friction and moisture ulcers (resulting from dependency); lower extremity ulcers (venous, arterial and neuropathic, and diabetic foot ulcers); etc.
Pressure ulcers
Pressure ulcers (PU) are a frequent complication, especially in patients with reduced mobility and advanced age. It is estimated that they affect more than 90,000 people in Spain every day (1).
Diabetic foot
Diabetic foot, a complication of diabetes caused by vascular damage due to increased blood glucose, affects 19-34% of diabetics (2). 70% of these ulcers (DFU) remain open after 20 weeks of treatment (3).
INNOVATION IN WOUND PREVENTION AND TREATMENT PROCESSES
SABELEC® is specialized in the development of new medical devices for the prevention and treatment of wounds by electrostimulation.
GOAL
Our goal is to be a reference in improving the quality of life of people with reduced mobility and at risk of developing skin lesions through electrostimulation technologies.
VISION
Our clear vision is to develop innovative solutions that help healthcare professionals and improve people’s health and well-being.
SOLUTION: SABELEC WOUND HEALING
SABELEC WOUND HEALING is a device that works by applying two electrodes to the skin near the wound that are connected to the equipment. At the push of a button, the device starts a preset, automated treatment program to stimulate the normal healing process.
Promotes health monitoring
Allows ambulatory monitoring
Health personnel decide which adhesive is most suitable for each user
Self-adaptive treatment for each wound
Easy to use, both for the user and the healthcare staff
Reduces healing time, soothes pain and eliminates infections
Enables wound epithelialization
Electrostimulation is a technology approved by the European Wound Management Association (EWMA)
Safety and efficacy proven by clinical evidence (4) (5).
TECHNOLOGY
Natural/autogenous electric field of the wound – COI (current of injury)
The skin acts as an electrical battery, as a result of the bidirectional “pumping” of chemical ions through its layers, resulting in a constant electrical potential (voltage) maintained permanently across the skin, called “transepithelial potential” (TEP) or “transdermal potential”.
Intact skin has a relatively high electrical resistance to TEP. When skin layers are damaged or destroyed in any type of wound, their electrical resistance to TEP, the “skin battery”, immediately decreases or disappears, resulting in a TEP-generated electrical field.
Many cell types involved in the wound healing response are sensitive to the electric field generated by TEP. The TEP electric field is the informative signal for these cells to move toward the wound surface and wound edges, as well as for their division, differentiation and proliferation. This natural healing phenomenon is called “current of injury” (COI).
SABELEC WOUND HEALING mimics, complements and/or replaces in real time and in a self-adaptive manner the natural electric field/current created after injury, thus enhancing a complex biological mechanism of wound healing, helping the directional migration of various cell types, such as endothelial cells and keratinocytes, and thus improving re-epithelialization (6) (7) (8).
Low Intensity Direct Current Stimulation (LIDC)
The Low Intensity Direct Current (LIDC) generated by the SABELEC WOUND HEALING electromedical device creates electrostatic fields between the positive and negative electrodes along and around the internal tissue pathways of the LIDC flow. The cells themselves have both internal and cell plasma membrane electrical properties, including a static surface electric charge and dielectric capacitance, which retain energy as a polarized electric field. The electrostatic fields generated by the LIDC of the SABELEC WOUND HEALING device between the electrodes have different “separating” effects on infected cells than on uninfected cells.
LIDCs have strong signaling effects on many cell types, including those of the immune system. They enhance the microbial killing functions of macrophages, white blood cells of the immune system critical to innate immunity and the inflammatory response to infection. The LIDCs and the electrostatic fields generated also command the migration and positioning of macrophages and B- and T-type lymphocytes (cells of the adaptive immune system) within infected and damaged tissues. In this way, a constant ultra-low current of microamperes is produced. Extensive international research has shown that LIDC has “microenvironment” modifying effects (9) (10) (11) (12).
(1) Soldevilla, J. A., Torra, J. I. B., Posnett, J., Verdu, J. S., San, L. M., & Mayan, M. S. (2007). The Burden of Pressure Ulcers in Spain. Wounds: a compendium of clinical research and practice, 19(7), 201-206.
(2) Zhang P, Lu J, Jing Y, Tang S, Zhu D, Bi Y. Global epidemiology of diabetic foot ulceration: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Ann Med. 2017 Mar;49(2):106—16.
(3) Margolis DJ, Kantor J, Santanna J, Strom BL, Berlin JA. Risk factors for delayed healing of neuropathic diabetic foot ulcers: a pooled analysis. Arch Dermatol. 2000 Dec;136(12):1531—5.
(4) Advanced Therapies in Wound Management. Piaggesi A, Läuchli S, Bassetto F et al. EWMA document: advanced therapies in wound management: cell and tissue based therapies, physical and bio-physical therapies smart and IT based technologies J Wound Care, 2018; 27(6), Suppl 6. JoWC_27_6_Supplemt-2_JWC-EWMA-supplement_advanced-therapies_Final3.pdf.
(5) J. Avendaño-Coy, P. López-Muñoz, D. Serrano-Muñoz, N. Comino-Suárez, C. Avendaño-López, y N. Martin-Espinosa, «Electrical microcurrent stimulation therapy for wound healing: A meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials», J.Tissue Viability, vol. 31, n.o 2, pp. 268-277, 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtv.2021.12.002.
(6) Zhao M. Electrical fields in wound healing-An overriding signal that directs cell migration. Semin Cell Dev Biol.2009 Aug;20(6):674-82.
(7) Ud-Din S, Bayat A. Electrical Stimulation and Cutaneous Wound Healing: A Review of Clinical Evidence. Healthcare 2014, 2(4), 445-467.
(8) Hunckler J, de Mel A. A current affair: electrotherapy in wound healing. J Multidiscip Healthc. 2017;10:179-194. Published 2017 Apr 20. doi:10.2147/JMDH.S127207.
(9) Sandvik EL, McLeod BR, Parker AE, Stewart PS. Direct electric current treatment under physiologic saline conditions kills staphylococcus epidermidis biofilms via electrolytic generation of hypochlorous acid. PLoS One. 2013;8(2):e55118. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0055118. Epub 2013 Feb 4.
(10) Ruiz-Ruigomez M, Badiola J, Schmidt-Malan SM, Greenwood-Quaintance K, Karau MJ, Brinkman CL, Mandrekar JN, Patel R. Direct electrical current reduces bacterial and yeast biofilm formation. International Journal of Bacteriology. Volume 2016 (2016).
(11) Wartenberg M, Wirtz N, Grob A, Niedermeier W, Hescheler J, Peters SC, Sauer H. Direct current electrical fields induce apoptosis in oral mucosa cancer cells by NADPH oxidase-derived reactive oxygen species. Bioelectromagnetics. 2008 Jan;29(1):47-54.
(12) Kim HB, Ahn S, Sim SB. Apoptosis by direct electric field (DEF) and nanosecond pulsed electric field (nsPEF) in tumor cells and tumor tissues. The 30th International Conference on Plasma Science, 2003. ICOPS 2003. IEEE Conference Record – Abstracts., Jeju, South Korea, 2003, pp. 436.