BACKGROUND Diabetic foot wounds remain a significant health-care issue. Healing these wounds in a timely manner is of paramount importance because the duration of ulceration correlates with increased rates of infection and amputation, costing billions of dollars yearly. Collagen-based matrices have been used as wound covers and have been shown to improve and expedite healing. We present our exp...

In man and domestic animals, scarring in the skin after trauma, surgery, burn or sports injury is a major medical problem, often resulting in adverse aesthetics, loss of function, restriction of tissue movement and/or growth and adverse psychological effects. Current treatments are empirical, unreliable and unpredictable: there are no prescription drugs for the prevention or treatment of dermal...

Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a polysaccharide common to most species and is found in many sites in the human body, including the skin and soft tissue. A systematic review of the literature and meta-analysis was performed to identify randomized controlled trials, evaluating the use of HA derivatives in healing burns, epithelial surgical, and chronic wounds. Nine studies were identified, which met the...

BACKGROUND Many different wound dressings and topical applications are used to cover surgical wounds healing by secondary intention. It is not known whether these dressings heal wounds at different rates. OBJECTIVES To assess the effectiveness of dressings and topical agents on surgical wounds healing by secondary intention SEARCH STRATEGY We sought relevant trials from the Cochrane Central...

OBJECTIVE To delineate age-dependent and tissue-specific molecular activities of the variant-inclusion fibronectin transcripts in fetal and postnatal skin and airway mucosal wounds during early events of the wound healing process. Fibronectin is involved in multiple steps of the wound healing process. The functional complexity of fibronectin is carried through its protein diversity, which is co...

It is widely acknowledged that exudate from non-healing wounds contains elevated levels of proteases, such as matrix metalloproteinases and polymorphonuclear elastase (Barrick et al, 1999; Trengove et al, 1999; Yager and Nwomeh, 1999). The excessive action of these proteases leads to considerable reduction in growth factors (He et al, 1999) and proteinase inhibitors; cleavage of matrix componen...

Routine care of non-healing acute and chronic wounds often comprises either cleaning or debridement. Consequently, debridement is a basic necessity to induce the functional process of tissue repair, which makes it a central medical intervention in the management of acute and chronic, non-healing wounds.

BACKGROUND Following surgery, incisions are usually closed by fixing the edges together with sutures (stitches), staples, adhesive glue or clips. This process helps the cut edges heal together and is called 'healing by primary intention'. However, not all incised wounds are closed in this way: where there is high risk of infection, or when there has been significant tissue loss, wounds may be l...

Wounds in adults are frequently accompanied by scar formation. This scar can become fibrotic due to an imbalance between extracellular matrix (ECM) synthesis and ECM degradation. Oral mucosal wounds, however, heal in an accelerated fashion, displaying minimal scar formation. The exact mechanisms of scarless oral healing are yet to be revealed. This review highlights possible mechanisms involved...