Controlling wound healing through debridement

The formation of slough (dead tissue) on a wound is widely accepted as an inhibitor to natural wound healing. In this article, a system of differential equations that models slough/wound interaction is developed. We prove a threshold theorem that provides conditions on the amount of slough to guarantee wound healing. As a state-dependent time scale, debridement (the periodic removal of slough) is used as a control. We show that closure of the wound can be reached in infinite time by debriding.