Everyone has had a wound. You have skinned your knee or cut your finger. In a few days, your wound healed over. Even very large injuries, while they may take longer, will still heal nicely in a healthy person. The process of wound healing is one of the amazing and reliable body processes. It is extremely complicated in terms of the cellular activites that take place, but for normal people, it almost never fails. However, each year in the USA, there are 6 million people who develop wounds that do NOT heal. In other words, 2% of the U.S. population have chronic non-healing wounds. Amazingly, about $50 BILLION dollars a year are spent on caring for patients whose wounds don’t heal!

The fact is, “wounds don’t NOT heal for no reason.” If you or someone you love has a wound which has failed to heal, there MUST be a reason (or more than one reason). The study of wound healing is what we call “woundology.”

Sometimes wounds which have failed to heal for a period of time are referred to as chronic “ulcers”. That is why you will hear doctors and nurses (“clinicians”) talk about diabetic foot ulcers, pressure ulcers, or venous stasis ulcers. (We will explain what these are later). Whether you call them “wounds” or “ulcers”, if you have a “sore” that is not getting better, it is a PROBLEM. There is a REASON, and the wound needs to be treated with something.