Commentary

Excerpt

As I speak around the country on the topic of wound healing, a question frequently asked is, “How can one get third-party payers to reimburse physical therapists for the use of electrical stimulation as part of a therapeutic regimen in wound management?” My usual response is that we must first demonstrate the effectiveness of such agents through published reports of well-controlled studies. I was therefore quite anxious to review the work of Griffin et al.

My initial impression of the study was a positive one. The authors are first to be applauded for their use of the term “pressure ulcer” and avoidance of the archaic and misleading term “decubitus ulcer.”¹ This choice of terminology immediately draws our attention to a factor that must be addressed in the study: consistency in methods used to minimize or alleviate pressure.

A second positive point concerned the selection of patient types.…