- Types of wound
- How wounds heal
- Stages of healing
- When to call for help
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Stages Of Healing
In a normal wound, healing goes through three stages:
During the first few hours, the wound is inflamed. The blood supply to the area is increased as part of the body's effort to fight off any potential infection and to bring in the materials needed for new cell growth.
This phase, which usually lasts around 10-14 days, is when the new cells are being formed and new tissues are growing. In the earlier part of this stage the wound may be quite weepy, but as the new tissues grow back over the wound bed the weepiness diminishes and there is a risk that it may get too dry.
In the final stage, which can last several months, the delicate new skin that has been formed matures and gets stronger.
In long-standing wounds the type of tissue damage and chemical changes caused by the underlying disease state disrupt the normal healing processes, so healing occurs very much more slowly and is much harder to achieve.