ABSTRACT
UNLABELLED: Chronic wounds are a major healthcare problem costing the United States billions of dollars a year. The American Academy of Dermatology has underscored the significance of wound care in dermatological practice. It is critical for all dermatologists to understand the elements of diagnosis and therapy. We emphasize major aspects of diagnosis and present a simple classification of wound dressings with guidelines for usage and relative cost data. LEARNING OBJECTIVE: After completing this learning activity, participants should be able to diagnose common types of chronic wounds, formulate a therapeutic plan, and describe the major classes of topical therapies and dressings for the chronic wound.
Subject(s)
Wounds and Injuries/therapy , Alginates/therapeutic use , Anti-Infective Agents/therapeutic use , Bandages , Bandages, Hydrocolloid , Chronic Disease , Collagen/therapeutic use , Debridement , Female , Foot Ulcer/therapy , Humans , Hydrogels/therapeutic use , Inflammation/physiopathology , Leg Ulcer/therapy , Male , Occlusive Dressings , Pyoderma Gangrenosum/therapy , Skin Ulcer/therapy , Wound Healing/physiology , Wound Infection/prevention & control , Wound Infection/therapy , Wounds and Injuries/complications , Wounds and Injuries/microbiologyABSTRACT
Advances in digital imaging and archiving have made the measurement and documentation of wound areas possible over time. To assess the reproducibility and precision of digital image measurements, we used WoundMatrix Web (http://www.woundmatrix.com/) and recruited a group of caregivers from the Johns Hopkins Wound Center to measure the size of wounds on digital images by measuring length and width and tracing the circumference of the same wounds. One set of images was provided by WoundMatrix (WoundMatrix Inc, Chadds Ford, PA) and a second set used our own photographs taken at the Johns Hopkins Wound Center. Our results demonstrate that digital analysis with WoundMatrix Web is reproducible and precise with acceptable variation among readers. This supports the use of digital images of wounds to follow clinical progress as well as analyze the effects of new clinical interventions in clinical trials.
