Sometimes, to understand where wound care is today, it’s worth going back to our roots!

Sometimes wound care and hyperbaric medicine bring us back to where many of us started: emergency response, rescue, and caring for patients in their most critical moments. In 1987, 18-month-old—known around the world as “Baby Jessica”—fell into a narrow well in Midland, Texas, becoming trapped more than 20 feet underground. For nearly 58 hours, firefighters, paramedics, drilling crews, and other rescuers worked around the clock to reach her while the nation watched. Her rescue was only the beginning. Prolonged entrapment created significant concerns for crush injury, circulation, tissue damage, and limb viability, requiring extensive multidisciplinary medical care after she was freed. Her story is a powerful reminder that rescue medicine, wound care, and hyperbaric medicine are closely connected. Before advanced wound therapies begin, someone often has to stabilize the patient, protect threatened tissue, and get them safely through the first critical hours. Sometimes, to understand where wound care is today, it’s worth going back to our roots in EMS, fire, rescue, and emergency medicine.