Chronic wounds: Innovations in diagnostics and therapeutics.

One of the major global health issues is the existence of chronic wounds. Chronic wounds are wounds that show a delayed, or even failed, healing process. The healing process often stagnates in the inflammatory phase or proliferative phase. Since traditional treatment methods have shown to be of limited effectiveness in chronic wound care, the focus has shifted to increase the knowledge of the wound healing process and the deficiencies encountered in chronic wounds. This increased knowledge has provided the opportunity for development of new diagnostics and therapeutics in chronic wound care that detect and treat specific deficiencies instead of one common treatment for all chronic wounds. This mini review aims to provide an overview of the current knowledge about the wound healing process and its deficiencies in chronic wound care. In addition, some promising diagnostic and therapeutic innovations will be highlighted.