Wound Assessment & Healing

Wounds are classified by depth — partial-thickness (limited to the epidermis and part of the dermis) versus full-thickness (extending through the dermis into subcutaneous tissue or deeper) — and heal through four overlapping phases: hemostasis (clotting, within minutes), inflammatory (redness, warmth, swelling — a normal early response, not automatically a sign of infection), proliferative (granulation tissue and new blood vessel formation fill the wound bed), and maturation (collagen remodeling, which can continue for a year or more and never fully restores original tensile strength).