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
Surface wound endogenous electric field
The skin has the property of an electric battery as a result of the bidirectional pumping of ions through its layers under normal physiological conditions, resulting in a permanently maintained electric voltage gradient across it, termed the transepithelial or transdermal electromotive potential (TEP). Intact skin normally has high electrical resistance to the TEP, but in any type of wound when the skin layers are damaged or destroyed, this electrical resistance immediately decreases or disappears, and the TEP becomes the key, localized bioelectric controller of wound healing.
Many cell types involved in the natural wound healing response are sensitive to the electric field generated by the TEP, which is the instructional signal for them to move towards the surface and edges of the wound, as well as for their division, differentiation and proliferation. This embryologically primitive, natural healing phenomenon has historically been termed the ‘current of injury’. Without the TEP, wounds either do not heal or close far more slowly.
The SABELEC WOUND HEALING electromedical device self-adaptively supplements or replaces the TEP-generated electric field in realtime with biomatching spatial-geometric and magnitude electric field parameters for the individual wound, thereby enhancing the natural wound healing mechanisms by promoting tissue re-epithelialization and regeneration (6) (7) (8).
Low intensity direct current
Cells have a membrane surface electric charge (voltage) and dielectric capacitive property that stores energy in a polarized electric field. We now know that these cell membrane voltages, and the degrees of their variability, are part of the body’s cellular, tissue and organism level bioelectrome communication and signaling network.
The ultra-precise and specific low intensity direct current (LIDC) generated by the SABELEC WOUND HEALING device produces a static electric and magnetic field along and around the electrically resistive and capacitive internal tissue pathways between the positive and negative SABELEC electrodes.
The LIDC-generated electrostatic fields have specific influences on the localized bioelectrome signaling in the microenvironments of infected cells and tissues, including on cells of the immune system, instructing the migration and positioning of macrophages and B- and T-type lymphocytes within the infected and damaged tissues, promoting increased macrophagic microbial clearance, and modulating the inflammatory response (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.