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Wound Assessment and Management

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Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine

Part of the book series: Current Clinical Practice ((CCP))

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Abstract

The medical and psychosocial complexities of wound management both in terms of the prevention and treatment highlight the challenges that face long-term care (LTC) practitioners. Wounds can be classified as a medical problem, a geriatric syndrome, or part of a larger systems-based problem. Understanding wound formation and healing is critical to the prevention and treatment of wounds. Treatment plans must not only address the wound itself but also comorbidities and medications that may hinder healing or predispose patients to acquiring wounds. The psychosocial and ethical principles of caring for patients who are no longer able to participate in their own care subsume a critical role in treatment success or failure. Though wounds may have more than one etiology, the four most common types of wounds will be reviewed: pressure, diabetic, ischemic or arterial, and venous. The occurrence and poor management of wounds in LTC is a major area of increased liability.

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Acknowledgment

This chapter was updated and revised from Ganesh Merugu MD & Andrew Rosenzweig MD, CMD, FACP published in the second edition. Assistance in the formatting of this chapter was provided by Drs. Nader Tavakoli and Amrit Parhar and editing assistance by Peter Winn MD, CMD.

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Stefanacci, R.G. (2023). Wound Assessment and Management. In: Winn, P., Fenstemacher, P.A., Stefanacci, R.G., DeLong, R.S. (eds) Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. Current Clinical Practice. Humana, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28628-5_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28628-5_13

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  • Publisher Name: Humana, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-28627-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-28628-5

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