Pacific confab on limb preservation set for tomorrow

The Department of Public Health is all set for the two-day inaugural Pacific Conference on Limb Preservation to be held tomorrow, Sunday, and April 10, Monday, at the Sandcastle of the Hyatt Regency Saipan.

Event coordinator and DPH physical therapist Dana McFadden said the event has enlisted over 100 participants from Guam, Palau, Pohnpei and the Marshall Islands. Healthcare professionals from Tinian and Saipan will also attend the conference.

DPH Secretary Joseph Kevin Villagomez earlier said the conference would be a first in the Pacific.

McFadden, together with Physical Therapy Department head Pam Carhill, will spearhead the conference.

McFadden said the conference would zero in on current concepts in wound healing and the presenter would be Jeffrey A. Feedar, a Certified Wound Specialist of Wound Care Associates from Wisconsin. Feedar’s seminar is entitled “Concepts of Wound Healing.”

Feedar said this event would have a dramatic positive influence on the care that clinicians provide to patients with open wounds.

DPH deputy secretary Lynn Tenorio earlier said the conference is intended to improve in many ways health services in the CNMI. Tenorio is a former program manager of the CNMI Diabetes Prevention and Control Program.

“The conference is an excellent opportunity to have a multi-disciplinary, multi-island education [on wound care],” said Villagomez. “This forum will serve to unite healthcare providers throughout the Micronesia in the fight for limb preservation.”

McFadden said that course participants would receive certificates of completion that could possibly help toward obtaining a Wound Specialist Certification.

Wound care is particularly apt in the CNMI, with its high rate of diabetes, a disease that sometimes lead to limb amputation when minor wounds that remain unnoticed are left untreated and become infected. The infection leads to gangrene, which requires amputation of the infected limb.

The CNMI has been found to have the largest number of cases of diabetes after Pima Indians and Nauru. Based on 2002 statistics, there are 3,019 known diabetes patients in the CNMI-mostly Chamorros and Carolinians, and Pacific islanders.

For more information, contact McFadden at the CHC Physical Therapy Department at 236-8327 or 236-8327.