Research Summary

Yi-Ting Tzen

Dr. Tzen’s research theme revolves around pressure injury and diabetic foot ulcer risk identification and prevention. Dr. Tzen utilizes non-invasive skin blood flow measurement to quantify severity of tissue ischemia and microvascular dysfunction. She investigated effectiveness of local cooling and alternating pressure on enhancing tissue tolerance toward pressure in people with spinal cord injury, and changes in microvascular function in trauma patients with spinal cord injury and people with type 2 diabetes. She currently expanded her research to include energy metabolism as a modifiable predictor for chronic wound formation.

Research Interests

• Pressure Injury
• Diabetic Foot Ulcer
• Spinal Cord Injury
• Laser Doppler flowmetry
• Signal processing

Collaborators

Orthopaedic Surgery

• Dane Wukich, M.D.
• Wei-Han Tan, M.D.
• Katherine Raspovic, D.P.M.

Selected Publications

1. Tzen YT, Brienza DM, Karg P (2019). Implementing local cooling to increase skin tolerance to ischemia during normal seating in people with spinal cord injury. Journal of Tissue Viability, 28,4,173-8.
2. Tzen YT, Purohit R, Mei S, Tan WH (2020). Assessing skin blood flow and interface pressure in patients with spinal cord injury provided an alternating pressure overlay: a cross-sectional study. Wound Manag Prev, 66,3,16-28,