Wounds and wound healing: new insights, fresh challenges

Professional project for wound healing clinicians

This article explores the professional project for an emergent subaltern specialist community of wound healing clinicians. Drawing on the literature on professions and boundary work, it examines how wound healing clinicians challenge the perception of their work as 'dirty' and seek its transformation into a specialism of 'woundology'. The article is based on an ethnography of a UK multidisciplinary team of doctors and nurses with an interest and expertise in wound healing, who work as clinical academics and provide wound care services in outpatient clinics. It demonstrates that wound healing clinicians vindicate their professional status by seeking to enthral the medical community in 'dirty wound care' as a focused clinical specialty of 'woundology'. Through training nurses to do medical wound care work, educating clinicians from other specialties about wounds and undertaking wound research, wound healing clinicians assert the professional boundaries of their specialism and its fit with mainstream medicine without embellishing the dirty aspects of their work.

Hyperspectral imaging in wound care: A systematic review

Multispectral and hyperspectral imaging (HSI) are emerging imaging techniques with the potential to transform the way patients with wounds are cared for, but it is not clear whether current systems are capable of delivering real-time tissue characterisation and treatment guidance. We conducted a systematic review of HSI systems that have been assessed in patients, published over the past 32 years. We analysed 140 studies, including 10 different HSI systems. Current in vivo HSI systems generate a tissue oxygenation map. Tissue oxygenation measurements may help to predict those patients at risk of wound formation or delayed healing. No safety concerns were reported in any studies. A small number of studies have demonstrated the capabilities of in vivo label-free HSI, but further work is needed to fully integrate it into the current clinical workflow for different wound aetiologies. As an emerging imaging modality for medical applications, HSI offers great potential for non-invasive disease diagnosis and guidance when treating patients with both acute and chronic wounds.

Hyperspectral imaging in wound care: A systematic review

Multispectral and hyperspectral imaging (HSI) are emerging imaging techniques with the potential to transform the way patients with wounds are cared for, but it is not clear whether current systems are capable of delivering real-time tissue characterisation and treatment guidance. We conducted a systematic review of HSI systems that have been assessed in patients, published over the past 32 years. We analysed 140 studies, including 10 different HSI systems. Current in vivo HSI systems generate a tissue oxygenation map. Tissue oxygenation measurements may help to predict those patients at risk of wound formation or delayed healing. No safety concerns were reported in any studies. A small number of studies have demonstrated the capabilities of in vivo label-free HSI, but further work is needed to fully integrate it into the current clinical workflow for different wound aetiologies. As an emerging imaging modality for medical applications, HSI offers great potential for non-invasive disease diagnosis and guidance when treating patients with both acute and chronic wounds.