Baltimore,Md. – January 16, 2007 -- A uniform process for the care of patients with chronic wounds has, for years, been a desire of many clinicians and government regulators. The Wound Healing Society (WHS) and Blackwell Publishing are excited to announce the publication of the WHS Clinical Guidelines for Chronic Wounds in a special issue of Wound Repair and Regeneration (WRR), the premier journal for wound healing.
Because of continued interest by the WHS membership and with a grant from the Wound Healing Foundation, a proposal was developed to establish guidelines for the treatment of chronic wounds. Separate, multi-disciplinary panels with representation from a wide spectrum of scientific, medical and nursing societies/associations having wound care as a major scope of interest were appointed to develop the respective guidelines for the major categories of chronic wounds.
The Guidelines are the product of more than a year of intense work by four committees. Draft guidelines were presented for discussion and revision at conferences held at the National Institutes of Health last spring, as well as at the 2006 WHS Annual Meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz. in May. Public input was evaluated and incorporated into the guidelines by the committees, which submitted the guidelines to WRR in their final form this fall.
"The discourse continues and panel members responsible for the development of the guidelines welcome further discussion on treatments that have not been cited and hope that this process will be an incentive for further research and contributions to the wound care literature," says Adrian Barbul, leader of this project and current president of the Wound Healing Society. Meanwhile, these published guidelines should serve as a valuable resource for those involved with the science and practice of wound healing.
These manuscripts are published in Wound Repair and Regeneration (www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/wrr/14/6). Readers wishing to receive a PDF of one or more of these guidelines should contact medicalnews@bos.blackwellpublishing.net.
Adrian Barbul, MD, FACS is Surgeon-in-Chief/Professor Surgery at Sinai Hospital/Johns Hopkins University and can be reached for questions at abarbul@jhmi.edu.
Wound Repair and Regeneration provides extensive international coverage of cellular and molecular biology, connective tissue, and biological mediator studies in the multidisciplinary field of tissue repair and regeneration. It's a highly respected journal that serves a diverse audience of surgeons, plastic surgeons, dermatologists, biochemists, cell biologists, and others. For more information, please visit www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/wrr.
The Wound Healing Society, an organization of medical professionals, was created in 1991 with the goal of establishing guidelines for wound treatment. Members soon realized that uniform care guidelines could not be developed because wounds and other associated terms lacked common, universal definitions. A committee was formed to develop the necessary definitions and, in 1994, published "Definitions and Guidelines for Assessment of Wounds and Evaluation of Healing." (Wound Repair and Regeneration 1994; 2 (3):165-170). For more information please visit www.woundheal.org.
Blackwell Publishing is the world's leading society publisher, partnering with 665 medical, academic, and professional societies. Blackwell publishes over 800 journals and has over 6,000 books in print. The company employs over 1,000 staff members in offices in the US, UK, Australia, China, Singapore, Denmark, Germany, and Japan. Blackwell's mission as an expert publisher is to create long-term partnerships with our clients that enhance learning, disseminate research, and improve the quality of professional practice. For more information on Blackwell Publishing, please visit www.blackwellpublishing.com or www.blackwell-synergy.com.