Stress Ulcer Prevention The subject up for study in this report shall be whether stress ulcers in hospital patients induced by being bedridden can be mitigated or even prevented by turning the patient to a new position at least once every two hours. The amount of research on this subject is not pervasive and voluminous. However, some material about the subject does exist. Thus, a conclusion should be possible regarding whether patient-turning is a solution to prevent stress ulcers from forming in the first place. While it may not truly be a fix-all solution, the practice of turning patients at two hour intervals shows some promised based on evidence-based research and results.

Stress ulcers, otherwise commonly referred to as deep tissue injury (DTI) is a pressing and persistent issue in the medical field. This is especially true when speaking of patients that are bedridden for any significant amount of time including those in nursing homes, those in hospitals for an extended amount of time and so forth. It is generally held by professionals and scholars in the medical industry that repositioning of patients at certain intervals is a way to partially or fully offset this happenstance per the work of Demol (2013) and others. Demol did a study on precisely that subject and did patient repositioning at intervals of two, three, four and six hours. It was found through their modeling that size and severity of stress ulcers/DTI was markedly reduced through the use of these intervals. As it relates to the needed interval time amount to get the best results, it was found that ulcers were further and further...

This study was written back in 2008 but it follows the later Demol study in that they use intervals of a certain length to turnt he patient so as to prevent bedsores. Interestingly enough, this older study suggested using two hour intervals. However, it also suggested remedies and methods like different mattresses (e.g. specialized foam mattress, air-filled matress, low air-loss bed and air-fluidized bed) as well as pharmacological interventions (e.g. diazepam, baclofen, dantrolene sodum, mephensine carbonate, dimethothiazine and orciprenaline). The study also noted that the proper intervention should be dictated by the stage classification (i.e. severity) of the sore. The score range is from one to four (Nayak et al., 2008).
Another study that evidence for the two-hour interval theory can be gleaned from was published earlier this year in March. Robert Behrendt (2014) and a few colleagues made reference to the fact that critically ill patients have a strong propensity to develop bedsores due to their consistently still state. This study used two different methods with one set of study patients receiving continuous bedside pressure mapping (CBPM) and the other group did not. A total of 422 patients were studied and…