Models of wound healing: an emphasis on clinical studies

The healing of wounds has always provided challenges for the medical community whether chronic or acute. Understanding the processes which enable wounds to heal is primarily carried out by the use of models, in vitro, animal and human. It is generally accepted that the use of human models offers the best opportunity to understand the factors that influence wound healing as well as to evaluate efficacy of treatments applied to wounds.

The objective of this article is to provide an overview of the different methodologies that are currently used to experimentally induce wounds of various depths in human volunteers and examines the information that may be gained from them.

There is a number of human volunteer healing models available varying in their invasiveness to reflect the different possible depth levels of wounds.

Currently available wound healing models include sequential tape stripping, suction blister, abrasion, laser, dermatome, and biopsy techniques. The various techniques can be utilized to induce wounds of variable depth, from removing solely the stratum corneum barrier, the epidermis to even split-thickness or full thickness wounds.

Depending on the study objective, a number of models exist to study wound healing in humans. These models provide efficient and reliable results to evaluate treatment modalities.