Rosalind Franklin Society Proudly Announces the 2023 Award Recipient for Advances in Wound Care

Significance: Healthy skin provides a barrier tocontaminants. Breaches in skin integrity are oftenencountered in the patient'shealthcarejourney,owing to intrinsic health issues or to variousprocedures and medical devices used. The timehas come to move clinical practice beyond mereawareness of medical adhesive-related skin injuryand toward improved care and outcomes.Recent Advances: Methods developed inresearch settings allow quantitative assessmentsof skin damage based on the measurement ofbaseline skin properties. These properties becomealtered by stress and over time. Assessmentmethods typically used by the cosmetic industry tocompare product performance could offer newpossibilities to improve clinical practice byproviding better information on the status ofpatient skin. This review summarizes available skinassessment methods as well as specificpatientrisks for skin damage.Critical Issues: Patients in health caresettings may be at risk for skin damage owingto predisposing medical conditions, healthstatus, medications taken, and procedures ordevices used in their treatment. Skin injuriescome as an additional burden to these medicalcircumstances and could be prevented.Technology should be leveraged to improvecare, help maintain patient skin health, andbetter characterize functional wound closure.Future Directions: Skin testing methodsdeveloped to evaluate cosmetic products orassess damage caused by occupationalexposure can provide detailed, quantitativeinformation on the integrity of skin. Suchmethods have the potential to guide preventionand treatment efforts to improve the care ofpatients suffering from skin integrity issueswhile in the health care system.