Case Study: 92-year old Kathy N

Kathy N (name changed to protect privacy) is a 92-year old lady, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and lives with her daughter, a nurse. Kathy spends the most part of the day lying on her bed with limited mobility due to her condition. Unfortunately, as a result of this, she used to feel pain and uneasiness in her back.

Her nurse daughter started helping her turn in bed every 2 hours, but unfortunately Kathy developed a sacral pressure ulcer.

To relieve her pain, Kathy’s daughter placed an air overlay to the mattress, but the pressure ulcer did not improve, and instead progressively became worse. Kathy also used a wheelchair with a foam cushion, which wasn't helping either.

At this point, Kathy’s family decided to buy the PURAP Mattress System and a PURAP Seat Cushion. Kathy has now been using PURAP for more than 2 months, and we cannot be more thrilled to report that the deterioration of the sacral pressure ulcer has stopped, and, according to her family, Kathy appears more attentive and alert.

We would like to share data we collected from Kathy’s setup. To ascertain pressure differentiation between the old support surfaces and PURAP, tissue interface pressure (TIPs) readings were taken with Kathy on her plain gel-foam mattress and then with the PURAP Mattress system placed on top of the mattress. Similar TIPs readings were taken with Kathy using the foam cushion on her wheelchair and then with the PURAP seat cushion.

TIPs readings comparing PURAP Mattress System with a specialized Gel-Foam Mattress showed lowering of peak pressure by 55%.

 TIPs readings comparing PURAP Wheelchair Cushion with a specialized Foam Cushion showed lowering of peak pressure by 49%.