Wound Therapy: Using Pressure Sensors to Measure Vacuum

Pressure sensors are used to measure the pressure level in patient wound-suction therapy. A key challenge faced by many designers is that wound-therapy devices are used for different critical care situations, which impact component requirements. For example, wound-therapy devices used in hospital environments need to accurately measure vacuum level, while home-healthcare devices often provide predialed pressure settings. In either case, it's important to ensure the desired amount of vacuum is applied to the wound. 

As it becomes more critical to provide home-healthcare products to meet growing demands from our aging population, while still providing high-quality in-hospital care, sensor platforms need to be able to scale from critical-care to home-healthcare product lines. Related benefits include ease of manufacturing, simplified assembly, and a streamlined supply chain.

As an example, negative-pressure (vacuum) wound-therapy pumps remove fluids such as blood and infectious materials by applying negative pressure on a sealed wound to help speed up healing. An ideal amount of vacuum applied to the wound is critical to ensure the wound or sutures do not open and provides optimal drying for healing.

In these vacuum pumps, pressure sensors sense the vacuum level or absence of pressure instead of measuring positive air pressure. By using a platform approach, medical device manufacturers can use the same basic sensors in a variety of wound-care products, which allows designers to scale the output to meet the applications' exact requirements. In highly modular product platforms, sensors can be calibrated for individual customer requirements.

These sensors also need to be resistant to hazardous materials. Sensors should be positioned as close to the fluids (e.g., blood, infectious materials, saline) as possible to ensure the most precise and accurate measurements as well as to provide ease of cleaning.

Fully amplified, compensated and calibrated board-mounted pressure sensors are a good fit for this application thanks to their scalability and liquid media compatibility.

Cost is also an issue. Because there is a range of wound-care products, ranging from hospital use to home healthcare, sensor manufacturers need to provide lower-cost and miniaturized products while providing the same level of quality and reliability.

AJ Smith is director of product marketing at Honeywell Sensing and Control, where he is responsible for leading, managing, and directing all product-marketing-related activities within the pressure and thermal business. He holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received his MBA from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus with specializations in finance, strategic management, and international business. He can be reached at [email protected].

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