Impedance sensing device for monitoring ulcer healing in human patients.

Chronic skin wounds affect millions of people each year and take billions of dollars to treat. Ulcers are a type of chronic skin wound that can be especially painful for patients and are tricky to treat because current monitoring solutions are subjective. We have developed an impedance sensing tool to objectively monitor the progression of healing in ulcers, and have begun a clinical trial to evaluate the safety and feasibility of our device to map damaged regions of skin. Impedance data has been collected on five patients with ulcers, and impedance was found to correlate with tissue health. A damage threshold was applied to effectively identify certain regions of skin as "damaged tissue".