Folks, we’ve got a big problem here. We’re talking about pressure ulcers, a real pain for our older adults, the critically ill, and those with spinal cord injuries. It’s a huge issue, believe me. We’re looking at 2.5 million cases in the US alone, and that’s just in acute care facilities. It doesn’t even count those at home or in nursing facilities.

Despite all our efforts, all our preventive measures, we’re not seeing a decrease in these cases. Not in decades. It’s a disaster. And it’s not just about the pain, the infection, and the risk of death. It’s costing our health system a fortune. We’re talking $26.8 billion annually. Over half of that is just for treating the worst cases, Stage 3 and 4 pressure injuries.

So, we need to take a hard look at the facts, the research, the guidelines. We need to improve the outcomes for this complex and costly condition. That’s why we’ve updated our guidelines. We’ve got the best evidence for treating Pressure Ulcers since our last update in 2015. We’ve even added a new section, ‘Palliative wound care for seriously ill patients with pressure ulcers’, because we’re seeing changing demographics.

Our goal with the Wound Healing Society Guideline project is simple. We want to provide clear, concise, and commercial-free guidelines. Guidelines that clinicians can use to guide care, that researchers can use to develop studies to improve treatment, and that both can use to understand the gaps in our knowledge. This is a big deal, folks. We’re going to tackle this problem head-on. All rights reserved.