Sergey Tarasov; Keronn art; Irina Danyliuk/Shutterstock.com


Wound care


Keeping tabs


One of the key components of effective wound management is keeping track of indicators that drive wound pathology and healing. Typically, this is done by assessing how they look and sending swabs to the lab. But there’s a better way on the horizon, and it comes in the form of new technologies that can quickly analyse the state of a wound and allow practitioners to expedite treatment and give patients the best chance to heal. Allison DeMajistre speaks to Benjamin Tee, associate professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering under the NUS College of Design and Engineering and the NUS Institute for Health Innovation & Technology; and Simiao Niu, assistant professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers University, to learn about how their research could lead to better wound healing.


ound care has become a multi-billion- dollar problem that continues to impose a substantial financial burden on global society – not to mention a strain on the time and resources of clinical staff. Typical wound healing follows a specific sequence of events, starting with the initial injury and ending with closure. The steps within that sequence include clotting, inflammation, proliferation, and remodelling. But unfortunately,


W 30


many patients have comorbidities that inhibit routine healing, such as advanced age, diabetes, peripheral vascular disease, inhibition of immune response, and venous insufficiency. The result of this is that a significant portion of wound care patients don’t make it past the inflammation stage of the healing sequence, and the acute wounds become chronic, making them susceptible to infection and other complications.


Practical Patient Care / www.practical-patient-care.com


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