A chronic wound is a wound that does not heal in an orderly set of stages and in a predictable amount of time the way most wounds do; wounds that do not heal within three months are often considered chronic. Chronic wounds seem to be detained in one or more of the phases of wound healing. For example, chronic wounds often remain in the inflammatory stage for too long. In acute wounds, there is a precise balance between production and degradation of molecules such as collagen; in chronic wounds this balance is lost and degradation plays too large a role.
Chronic wounds may never heal or may take years to do so. These wounds cause patients severe emotional and physical stress and create a significant financial burden on patients and the whole healthcare system.
Acute and chronic wounds are at opposite ends of a spectrum of wound healing types that progress toward being healed at different rates.
Read more about Chronic Wound: Signs and Symptoms, Cause, Pathophysiology, Treatment, Epidemiology
Famous quotes containing the words chronic and/or wound:
“What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralisation and disorder on the part of the inferior ... jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.”
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It has no nurse nor kin to know
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