Healing Diabetic Ulcers with the CellSonic Shock Wave Machine
Diabetics often have skin ulcers that are tough to heal. Because of the diabetes, these ulcers don’t have the robust circulation necessary to get oxygen and nutrients to the wound—two requirements for healing. As a result, infection often sets in.
Doctors have had great success in Europe with shock wave treatments. A recent German study by Aschermann I, Noor S et al., published in Cell Physiol Biochem, documented patients with 75 leg ulcers. No anesthetic was used, just the CellSonic shock wave machine, which is a drug-free, noninvasive approach to treat hard-to-heal wounds. The treatment was usually performed every two weeks for several weeks depending on the wound. These were the results:
- 41% showed complete healing
- 16% were significantly improved
- 35% were improved
- 8% showed no change
In other words, 92% of all treated ulcers improved with this treatment. This is a game changer because many times doctors consider diabetic skin ulcers impossible to heal. Patients are taught to change their bandages regularly and hope that gangrene and amputation are not in their future.
But we’ve seen now that many of these wounds can be healed.
The CellSonic machine increases circulation and stimulates healing with very intense pressure pulses. These are actually acoustic waves that we hear as a sharp sound, which gives rise to the term “shock wave.” We’ve all heard a shock wave when we’ve heard an airplane’s sonic boom as it begins to move faster than the speed of sound. A shock wave is an area of very high pressure moving through the air, earth or water. Although it is just a pressure pulse, our ears perceive it as a sound. Electrohydraulic shock waves seem to produce better medical results than shock waves generated by electromagnetic or piezoelectric technology.
Each shock wave pulse lasts only a few nanoseconds. The pulses create a micro injury, alerting the body to a problem that needs attention. The body responds by triggering biological responses that stimulate the body to generate new tissue.
As pressure pulses race through the wound, they kill viruses, bacteria and parasites, and doctors can avoid having to prescribe antibiotics. New blood vessels grow into the area and this increases circulation. The body also calls upon stem cells to come to the injured site.
CellSonic technology has its roots in the large machines called electrohydraulic lithotripters that have been used since the 1980s to break up kidney stones. This technology was a game changer back then, too, because surgery to remove a kidney stone used to be one of the most difficult treatments to perform.
Now, a smaller, more compact form of that same technology—the CellSonic machine—is available in offices and clinics to treat surgical and nonsurgical wounds, and painful conditions. The CellSonic machine has been making its way to the United States, and Andrew Dickens, NMD, owner of Healing Pathways Medical Clinic, in Scottsdale, has the only CellSonic machine in the Southwest.
For more information, call Healing Pathways Medical Clinic at 480-699-7400 or visit HealingPathwaysMedical.com. To read the study mentioned in this article, visit cellsonic-medical.com/img/2017_Cell_Physiol_Biochem.pdf.
