Implementing Wound Balance: Outcomes and future recommendations

The Consensus Document published by WUWHS presents Wound Balance as a medical concept developed to address the increasing burden of non-healing wounds worldwide. Wound Balance promotes the early intervention in wound care through biomarker monitoring, patient-centered assessments, and individualized treatment strategies.

While TIMERS and BIOMES frameworks assist clinicians in identifying risks and planning appropriate interventions, the recommended local therapy with SAP dressings support the shift to a normal healing trajectory. The document emphasizes the importance of effective patient communication and holistic care that integrates both clinical and social factors. This new approach aims to optimize outcomes, reduce healthcare burdens, and improve the quality of life for patients with chronic wounds.

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SAP dressings provide the multifactorial, wound-balance benefits that non-healing wounds require from a dressing. The main three groups of SAP dressings are characterised by similar modes of action, supporting the shift to a normal healing trajectory.

• Hydro-Responsive Wound Dressings not only facilitate autolysis but also sequester excess levels of proteases, such as matrix metalloproteinases and bacterial load.
• Silicone SAP Dressings maintain an adequate level of moisture in the wound microclimate, prevent maceration and peri-wound damage, and absorb and sequester wound healing inhibitors.
• Superabsorbent Dressings offer effective absorption and retention capacity in highly exuding wounds, preventing leakage and strikethrough.

The risk factors and comorbidities for non-healing wounds are rising globally. With the simultaneous rise in the aging population and the projected shortage of a qualified health force, there is a global need to simplify wound care paradigms, especially for non-healing wounds.

This can also improve development, training and retention of registered wound care clinicians at a time when non-healing wound are beginning to be seen as a ‘silent epidemic’.

The principles of Wound Balance can improve wound healing and improve patient outcomes through timely assessment.

The case studies in this consensus demonstrate that Wound Balance can be achieved in all wound aetiologies and clinical settings, throughout the lifespan, and throughout the wound healing trajectory.

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• Chair: Harikrishna K. R. Nair, Director, Wound Care Unit, Kuala Lumpur Hospital, Malaysia; Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Lincoln University Malaysia; Professor, Institute of Health Management; Austria, Adjunct Professor, Department of Surgery, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banares Hindu University, India; Executive Director, College of Wound Care Specialists
• Co-Chair: Karen Ousey, Emeritus Professor of Skin Integrity, University of Huddersfield, President ISTAP, Adjunct Professor Wound Care, Monash University, Australia. Clinical Manager OmniaMed Communications
• Trent Brookshier, Podiatric Surgeon, North Park Podiatry, San Diego, United States
• Emmanuelle Candas, Department of Geriatrics, Sainte Perined Hospital, Paris, France
• Cornelia Erfurt-Berge, Senior Dermatologist, Head of Dermatological Wound Centre, Dermatologie, Hautklinik Uniklinikum Erlangen, Ulmenweg, Erlangen, Germany
• Sandrine Robineau, President of the French Society of Pressure Ulcer, Brittany, France
• John Schäfer, Wound Specialist in Nursing, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany
• Hans Smola, Professor of Dermatology, University of Cologne, Germany; Medical Director, HARTMANN
• Laura Swoboda, Professor of Translational Science and Family Nurse Practitioner, University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, United States
• Sharon Trouth, Vascular Advanced Nurse Practitioner, Black Country Vascular Centre, Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Trust, United Kingdom