Nurses at a hospital in Montreal say they've discovered a better way to treat infected wounds.

Diabetics can develop infected foot ulcers that fail to heal properly with conventional treatments.

To help them, the nursing team at Charles LeMoyne Hospital decided to apply two wound-care methods at the same time.

Isabelle Reeves

First, a silver-coated dressing called Acticoat is added to stop bacterial growth. Then, a vacuum-assisted closure or VAC sucks out fluid from the open wound and stimulates circulation.

Both treatments are standard for burn victims and trauma cases, but haven't been used in combination for infected wounds.

"Instead of having wound care for months, it's taking only a few weeks and they can have the closure of the wound," said Isabelle Reeves, a nurse specializing in wound care at the hospital on Montreal's South Shore.

Vacuum-assisted closure sucks out fluid from the open wound and stimulates circulation.

The new therapy is expensive compared to traditional treatment. One small sheet of the silver dressing costs $20, but there are other savings.

"Rather than being in hospital for three, four months and being skin grafted ... we're able to shorten the length of the illness and [let] the patients go home earlier," said Dr. Jacques-Philippe Faucher, an internal medicine specialist.

Diabetic Claude St. Martin is going home on his own two feet thanks to the nurses' ingenuity, which won them a 3M Innovation Prize.

"That's the thing that helped heal my leg," said St. Martin. "Otherwise, they would have amputated."

The nurses plan to publish their new way of healing wounds in a journal, since they're already receiving calls from other medical centres interested in trying it.