What is a Bedsore?

We get calls every day at The Dickson Firm from people who have discovered that their loved one has suffered skin breakdown, referred to as a bedsore. Very often, the family of the nursing home resident does not discover the skin breakdown until the resident gets to the hospital.

This is not at all uncommon. Frankly, it is actually uncommon for a person to go into their loved one's room and inspect their buttocks. The buttocks and the coccyx area is one of the most common areas for skin breakdown.

The reason for that is that skin breakdown is caused by unrelieved pressure. If you are sitting in a chair, you will eventually reposition yourself because it will be uncomfortable. You will ultimately get up and walk around. If you are in bed, you will eventually roll over and relieve the pressure on your body. If you've ever been on a long airplane flight or on a long car ride, you very well may feel stiff when you arrive at your destination. Your buttocks may feel numb. This is because unrelieved pressure causes the tissue not to receive proper blood flow.

Without proper blood flow, the tissue ultimately dies.

If someone you love has suffered skin breakdown in a nursing home, it's very important that you contact us as soon as possible. We will be happy to talk with you and help you in any way that we can. Please call us at 1-800-OHIO LAW.

Bedsores are staged one through four.

A stage one bedsore is a reddened area. It is not open. It's very easy to resolve. All the nursing home needs to do is make sure they relieve the pressure from the area of the stage one bedsore.

A stage two bedsore is open. A stage two bedsore is harder to resolve than a stage one bedsore, but it can also be resolved by relieving the pressure in that area of the body where the bedsore exists.

A stage three bedsore is open and deeper than a stage two bedsore and it is harder to resolve. It requires the nursing home to make sure to relieve the pressure on that area of the resident's body.

A stage four bedsore can go all the way to the bone. Many stage four bedsores never heal.

In addition to turning and repositioning the resident every two hours in bed and more often when they are in a chair, the nursing home also has to address their nutritional needs. There is a direct correlation between nutrition and hydration and skin breakdown. Dehydrated residents are more at risk for skin breakdown. Malnourished residents are more at risk for skin breakdown. Residents need adequate protein to heal skin breakdown.

The nursing home may tell you that the skin breakdown was unavoidable. The question for you to ask yourself is, did your loved one have skin breakdown in the past? Did they have skin breakdown at home? Have they ever had a bedsore? If the answer is no, then odds are their skin breakdown was not unavoidable but instead was caused by neglect.