Chronic wounds, such as pressure ulcers, vascular ulcers, and diabetic ulcers, continue to be a serious health concern in the United States. Millions of Americans are affected each year, with total cost of their care reaching billions of dollars. Once a wound heals, which may take years for some patients, the chance of recurrence is high. Venous ulcers, for example, have recurrence rates approaching 70%.

Management of patients with wounds can present a considerable challenge for several reasons: (1) the lack of a research base for many aspects of wound care; (2) the proliferation of products used to treat wounds; (3) the lack of a common language for describing and documenting wounds; and (4) the need for more education on skin and wound care in medical and nursing schools.

It is important, therefore, for skin and wound care practitioners to be able to turn to timely credible and authoritative sources of information on skin and wound management. Advances in Skin & Wound Care is now entering its 21st year of successfully providing this essential information to practitioners.

In 2008, Advances in Skin & Wound Care will again provide peer-reviewed continuing education articles for its readers on a regular basis. Research done by the journal's editorial staff indicates that busy wound care practitioners highly value access to earning continuing education credits through distance learning educational models. In response, our journal will provide this critical need through practical educational based thought and content articles addressing the core principles and practices of wound management.

Richard "Sal" Salcido, MD, the journal's Editor-in-Chief, is an acknowledged authority on wound management, as are the journal's Clinical Associate Editors, Elizabeth A. Ayello, PhD, RN, APRN, BC, CWOCN, FAPWCA, FAAN, and R. Gary Sibbald, BSc, MD, FRCPC (Med) (Derm), FAPWCA, MEd. They will work with the journal's expert Editorial Advisory Board to select papers for the continuing education activity. These papers will focus on synthesizing existing research and accepted practice standards into key recommendations for day-to-day management of patients with wounds.

In addition, each year the journal's editorial staff will conduct surveys of the journal's readership to determine topics of interest for future issues. In 2007, our readers expressed a special interest in learning more about clinical practice guidelines. We helped address this need by reprinting, courtesy of Wound Care Canada, 4 articles on "Best Practice Recommendations" guidelines. Wound assessment continues to be a hot topic of interest and this issue's continuing education activity is on the topic of "Measuring Wound Length, Width, and Area: Which Technique?" Readers also request more articles on continence, nutrition, burn wounds, and surgical wounds.

Searches of the current literature will also be done periodically. The results of the surveys and the literature searches will be shared with Dr Salcido, Dr Ayello, Dr Sibbald, and the board to assist them in topic selection and to ensure that the journal is meeting the informational needs of its readership.