EUROPEAN  TISSUE  REPAIR  SOCIETY

One of the criticisms that has been directed towards the field of wound healing is the limited number of randomised prospective controlled trials supporting the many different practices and treatments that are used. Often the reply to such criticism usually is that it is impossible or difficult to organise controlled trials in wound healing as well as being expensive. This leads to the question of who will finance these studies. Over the last few years because of government regulatory issues, as well as the need to prove efficacy of new therapies this work has been mainly financed by Industry. The benefit of these studies has been not only determining whether a specific growth factor or bio-engineered living skin equivalent is efficacious but probably more important is the data gained from the control arms of these studies in which standard care has been evaluated for different underlying pathologies associated with chronic wounds. Bandaging for venous ulcers, pressure relief for pressure ulcers and wound debridement for diabetic ulcers. In the latter case Steed and colleagues have demonstrated that debridement on its own improved healing of diabetic ulcers and therefore must be a major component of standard therapy in treating this type of chronic wound.¹

The Cochrane Evidence-Based Medicine Group has been one of the pioneers in this field and information about the wound group is found below (see overleaf). I would strongly recommend that individuals involved in randomised prospective controlled trials in tissue repair not only submit this work to the speciality journals but also to the relatively new journal ‘Evidence-Based Medicine’.

In this issue we have two articles in our ‘Contentious ideas in wound healing’ section by Dr Michael Clark on the quality of ‘evidence’ in evidence-based medicine along with a previously published article by Dr Krys Gebhardt which addresses the question of reliability and validity of evidence.

We are approaching the ETRS Annual Meeting to be held in Brussels 24–27 May 2000 and in this issue have included an update on the programme. Dr Mieke Flour, the local organiser, feels this will be as successful as our previous meetings. There is a congress website which can be reached on http://www.timshel.be/etrs/ or through a link with the ETRS website (http://www.etrs.org).

We continue to encourage members to submit articles on their wound healing clinics and laboratories to be published in the Bulletin or other news on wound healing activities in their countries.

In this issue we have highlighted two articles on wound healing in Africa. One by Terence Ryan who has helped to establish a Regional Dermatology Training Centre in Tanzania and the other by Kent Jönsson who has been a member of ETRS for many years and was one of the organisers of the 2nd ETRS Annual Meeting in Malmö, Sweden in 1992. Kent has spent a number of years in Africa, is a practising surgeon in Harare, Zimbabwe, and has gained a wealth of experience in treating wounds in Africa.

We would like to congratulate the newly elected Board Members Professor Sabine Werner (Zürich, Switzerland), Professor Alberto Giannetti (Modena, Italy), Dr Luc Téot (Montpellier, France), Dr Raj Mani (Southampton, England). Mark Ferguson has commented on the large number of members who voted at this election.

Reference

1. Steed DL, Donohoe D, Webster MW, Lindsley L. and the Diabetic Ulcer Study Group. Effect of extensive debridement and treatment on the healing of diabetic foot ulcers. Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 1996, 183: 61–4.

George W. Cherry
Editor

Editorial address:

ETRS Business Office
Wound Healing Institute
Department of Dermatology
Churchill Hospital, Old Road
Headington, Oxford, OX3 7LJ, UK

Tel: +44 (0)1865 228264
Fax: +44 (0)1865 228233
e-mail: OxfordWoundHealingInstitute@compuserve.com