Hypothesis: Wound care can be prospectively recorded on a large scale if a standardized wound documentation system is established. Based on such a documentation system, a network of specialized wound care centers can generate a large and valid database of wound characteristics, wound-healing dynamics, and wound care.
Design: A clinical prospective analysis.
Setting: Ten German specialized surgical wound care centers.
Patients and methods: In a 2-year pilot phase, 4175 patients with 7051 chronic nonhealing wounds were documented using a new computerized system and treated following defined standards.
Results: A total of 1761 diabetic, 1349 venous, 1146 ischemic, 1079 pressure, and 759 postoperative nonhealing wounds and 957 ulcers with other causes were prospectively documented. Chronicity of ulceration was shown by the long wound duration of 433 days (range, 14-1867 days). Wound documentation was well integrated into daily practice, as shown by a mean +/- SD documentation time of 5.7 +/- 2.2 minutes per visit. A multivariate analysis of factors known to interfere with wound healing revealed significant effects of patient compliance, grading of wound depth, and patient age (P<.001 for all).
Conclusions: The German Wound Net achieved, for the first time, centralized and prospective documentation of more than 7000 chronic wounds treated according to defined guidelines. This new concept of a network of specialized wound care centers working with standardized treatment plans and prospective documentation of chronic wounds may open a new dimension for wound-healing studies and may represent an optimal platform for multicenter trials.