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Odor in wounds can be distressing for both the patient and the caregiver who must care for them. Odor can cause the patient to feel embarrassed or ashamed and may lead them to withdraw from their daily civilities. Patients with foul-smelling wounds are often driven to cover up the odor using various methods which may…

During our training, we are all taught about the three phases of normal wound healing; wound inflammation, proliferation, and remodeling. This is a relatively well-understood area of wound management and one that is predictable and consistent. Sadly, in wound management as in life, nothing is ever quite that simple. A number of wounds appear to…

It is sometimes easy to forget when we are caught up in complex treatment protocols, or when we are surrounded by paperwork, that the one thing that really matters in wound management is achieving wound closure. When a wound has closed properly, our work is done. Given the fundamental nature of wound closure, it is…

In previous articles, we have looked at the basic differences between chronic wounds and acute wounds and have considered some of the macroscopic factors that are responsible for the development of a chronic wound through abnormal wound healing. This article will look at some of the differences between the two types of wound on a…

The healing of an acute wound follows a well-ordered pattern through a number of defined phases. Often, acute wounds heal themselves without coming close to a wound care specialist. Unfortunately, as all wound care practitioners know, a large proportion of wounds fail to follow this well-understood path and prove more difficult to heal. These are…

As wound care professionals, we all want to believe that we are having an active and positive effect on the healing of a wound under our care. None of us would like to think that the wound would close just as quickly if we were not involved. And all of us would hate to think…

Sometimes, it seems as though all the anatomy and complex terminology that we learn during our training is…(dare we say it)… somewhat less than essential in a great many of the situations we encounter in our everyday practice. There may seem little advantage in being intimately acquainted with the scientific names of all the layers…

Pain is “whatever the patient says it is, existing whenever the patient says it does”. Described, Not Measured This simple observation, first expressed in 1968, goes right to the heart of the problem of addressing patients’ pain of all types, including wound pain. The inescapable problem is that pain cannot be measured directly, but only…