A Comprehensive Review of Wound Healing

Unhealed wounds are a largely hidden epidemic, affecting 6.5 million Americans and costing about $25 billion a year, with numerous patients affected. Unhealed wounds result in lower quality of life and limit many all-day activities for patients. Despite this large socioeconomic burden, there have been only a few meaningful advances in the science of wound care. Wounds represent a cross section of many medical disciplines—diabetes, trauma, hypertension, vascular insufficiency, and rheumatologic diseases—and a multidisciplinary approach is typically needed. In this review, we provide an overview of wound healing, its pathophysiology, different types of wounds, and the current state of therapeutic art.   Key words: chronic wounds, infection, inflammation, mathematical modeling, ulcers, wounds