ABSTRACT
The clinical evaluation of cutaneous wounds has been problematic throughout the entire history of wound care. The very denition of a chronic wound, “a wound that does not heal in an orderly set of stages and in a predictable amount of time the way most wounds do,”1 can only be determined retrospectively; it is not particularly helpful clinically. In addition, attempting to ascertain precisely what is causing the wound and preventing healing has remained elusive. This has led to a generally accepted system of categorizing wounds based on their etiologies, such as diabetic foot ulcer, venous leg ulcer, pressure ulcers (decubitus), and others. To make matters more complex, wounds are also evaluated based on wound characteristics such as slough, exudate, maceration, wound edges, “infection,” as well as complicating host factors such as critical limb ischemia, host immune response, and diabetes. It is clear that the answer as to what “type” of wound an individual patient possesses is much more of an art than a scientic description.
