What COVID‐19 taught us: New opportunities and pathways from telemedicine and novel antiseptics in wound healing

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic deeply impacted the capacity of the health systems to maintain preventive and curative services, especially for the most vulnerable populations. During the pandemic, the wound healing centres in Italy assisted a significant reduction of the frequency of their hospital admission, since only urgencies, such as severe infections or wound haemorrhagic complications, were allowed to the hospital. The aim of this multidisciplinary work is to highlight the importance of a new pathway of wound care with patient‐based therapeutic approach, tailored treatments based on the characteristics of the wound and fast tracks focused on the outpatient management, reserving hospital assessment only for patients with complicated or complex wounds. This analysis highlights the point that patients with chronic wounds need to be critically evaluated in order to find the best and most appropriate care pathway, which should vary according to the patient and, especially, to the characteristics of the wound. Moreover, the most adequate topic antiseptic should be started as soon as possible. An appropriate and correct management of the wound care will allow to link the knowledge based on years of clinical practice with the new challenges and the need to visit patients remotely, when possible.

A Narrative Review of the Launch and the Deployment of Telemedicine in Italy during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The eligibility process applied to the selected references, after the elimination of the duplicated ones, returned 39 works [ 5 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ], including a review focused on the relationship between telemedicine and radiotherapy [ 39 ].…”

“…The neurology sector has also recorded an important use of applications in Parkinson’s disease [ 44 ]; in the use of telemedicine for the multidisciplinary assessment of patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis [ 47 ]; for multiple sclerosis [ 28 ]; for a headache specialist center; and in applications of telephysiotherapy [ 47 ]. The overview also reported the application of telemedicine in other sectors less common in telemedicine solutions, such as: colorectal surgery [ 24 ]; wound care [ 20 ]; urological benign diseases [ 32 ]; endocrinology [ 34 ]; inflammatory bowel disease [ 37 ]; teleconsulting with a bariatric center; and chronic liver disease [ 42 ]. There has been the use of systems, in some simple cases, such as telephony [ 32 , 50 ], and in other more complex cases, such as specialized servers [ 53 ], which have allowed the application of telemedicine with success.…”

“…Scalise, A., et al [20]. What COVID-19 taught us: New opportunities and pathways from telemedicine and novel antiseptics in wound healing.…”

Reprofiling Hydrogen Peroxide from Antiseptics to Pyolytics: A Narrative Overview of the History of Inventions in Russia

“…It has been reported that known mucolytic and expectorant drugs also do not provide high speed and efficiency in dissolving and removing thick and sticky pus in various purulent diseases [48]. All this justifies the need to search for new and more effective "antipurulent" drugs [49].…”

Fast-Track Pathway: An Effective Way to Boost Diabetic Foot Care

“…Hence, managing DFUs from the beginning at the first examination to the end must be specified in every health system. 23,24 According to the studies, despite establishing diabetes management guidelines, it seems that without suitable education, training, and proper protocols, achieving our goals in DFUs management is impossible. Therefore, to solve this issue, the International Diabetic Foot Care Group (IDFCG) and diabetic foot international introduced a new, easy-to-perform method called the Fast-Track Pathway for DFUs.…”