Pressure Ulcer is a life-threatening disease. In the USA, around 60.000 people die annually because of it. The average cost of treating it is around $50.000!
But costs are not the only consequence of these wounds. The human cost of wounds is measured in pain, distress, embarrassment, anxiety, prolonged hospital stays, chronic morbidity or even death. Along with the pain from which the patient suffers, the wounds smell so bad that interrupts the routine life of the patient. Chronic pains usually bring emotional traumas for patients’ partners as well.
Furthermore, according to a paper published by Francisco José García-Sánchez et al., many of family members have no knowledge on PU and how to treat them. This may lead to sever problems.
Moreover, it kills the self-confidence of the suffering person and creates stress traumas. According to a study carried out in the field of quality of life of people with pressure ulcer, when people with PU are compared with similar people without pressure ulcers, those with pressure ulcers had significantly lower scores (worse health status) on all SF‐36 (quality of life measurement questionnaire) sub scales. The number of pressure ulcers also influences the individual’s health‐related quality of life; for example, in one study in Canada, 10% of people with one or two pressure ulcers and 16% of individuals with three or more pressure ulcers reported their quality of life as being ‘very bad’ or ‘bad’ compared with only 6.9% of individuals without pressure ulcers.
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