What COVID-19 taught us: New opportunities and pathways from telemedicine and novel antiseptics in wound healing

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic deeply impacted the capacity of the health systems to maintain preventive and curative services, especially for the most vulnerable populations. During the pandemic, the wound healing centres in Italy assisted a significant reduction of the frequency of their hospital admission, since only urgencies, such as severe infections or wound haemorrhagic complications, were allowed to the hospital. The aim of this multidisciplinary work is to highlight the importance of a new pathway of wound care with patient-based therapeutic approach, tailored treatments based on the characteristics of the wound and fast tracks focused on the outpatient management, reserving hospital assessment only for patients with complicated or complex wounds. This analysis highlights the point that patients with chronic wounds need to be critically evaluated in order to find the best and most appropriate care pathway, which should vary according to the patient and, especially, to the characteristics of the wound. Moreover, the most adequate topic antiseptic should be started as soon as possible. An appropriate and correct management of the wound care will allow to link the knowledge based on years of clinical practice with the new challenges and the need to visit patients remotely, when possible.