ABSTRACT

With the concurrent advances in medical care, both patients with more severe wounds and patients with a greater degree of debilitation are surviving longer than in the past. These wounds and patients present those who provide care challenges of ever-increasing difficulty. This in turn has led to increased research and understanding of the basic mechanisms of wound healing, both for normally healing wounds and also for wounds with impaired healing. The increased knowledge of the healing mechanisms has also led to the development of additional treatment modalities, including the vacuum-assisted closure system (The V.A.C., KCI, San Antonio, TX). Since being certified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1995, the use of the V.A.C. system has exponentially increased for the treatment of a wide variety of wounds. While originally designed for the treatment of nonhealing or impaired healing wounds, its use has expanded to include virtually all types of wounds.