Opportunities and Challenges of the Management of Chronic Wounds: A Multidisciplinary Viewpoint

Abstract

Chronic nonhealing wounds are debilitating with high morbidity and mortality in a highly vulnerable patient population. Despite extensive efforts to develop therapeutic strategies for effective treatment of chronic wounds, so far, limited clinical success has been achieved. The reasons for the limited clinical success include (i) the absence of validated centers of excellence, education, and standards in wound care management; (ii) limited numbers of funding agencies with the central focus on chronic wounds; (iii) lack of robust evidence for wound healing approaches in the current literature together with the lack of methodologic consistency in clinical trials; (iv) complexity of wound environment due to patients' comorbidity; (v) lack of transparency in politics including complexity of the reimbursement procedures; (vi) growing complexity with the increasing percentage of aging populations; and (vii) crowded market with overwhelming "me too" products with limited clinical efficacies. This perspective is intended to discuss these challenges in the field of wound care and introduce multidisciplinary opportunities for substantial improvement of wound healing management. To address the current challenges in the field, we suggest that stakeholders in wound care adopt a proactive integrated response that utilizes a broad network and takes full advantage of emerging technologies.