Q. What are some of the important considerations when diagnosing and treating non-healing Wounds?

A. Clinicians must be cautious to avoid over interpreting the significance of microbiology wound cultures in their clinical evaluation of non-healing wounds.  Elongated culture resulting allows for the bacterial burden of the wound to change substantially by the time culture results are provided making diagnosis and treatment a moving target.  Molecular biology has proven that culture methodologies can be markedly less sensitive to bacterial detection than DNA detection methodologies like Polymerase Chain Reaction.