Date of Award
May 2024
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Engineering
First Advisor
Mahsa Dabagh
Committee Members
Jacob Rammer, Sandeep Gopalakrishnan
Abstract
Wound healing is a complex phenomenon which involves both mechanical and biochemical processes. Chronic wounds have been of more interest, mainly because they continue to impair patient's health-related quality of life, while also leading to economic, social, and clinical burdens and limitations. In developed countries, it has been approximated that 1%–2% of the population will suffer from a chronic wound during their life1,2 and they currently affect around 6.5 million US patients. Chronic wounds are classified as so when the healing process of a wound does not progress through the stages of wound healing, including homeostasis, inflammation, proliferation, and remodeling, in a sequential manner to completely repair the anatomical and functional integrity of the wound tissue within approximately 4 weeks to 3 months. Several studies have investigated micro-level cellular mechanisms involved in the healing process of chronic wounds. However, macro-level biomechanical mechanisms have been shown to play a key role on enhancing our understanding about the wound healing process. Previous studies on micro-level biomechanics have been limited to standard wound geometries, sizes, and properties of wound tissue. In this thesis project, I have investigated how changes in thickness and properties of the patient-specific skin layers will impact the micro-level biomechanics. The examined thickness and properties represent the changes that patients may experience due to aging and diabetes. I have developed three-dimensional models of healthy, elderly and diabetic wound tissues based on patient-specific wound geometries. Moreover, I created a 3D geometry of healthy, elderly and diabetic mice to allow us to understand the similarities and differences in macro-level mechanisms of wound healing between a human and a mouse. I replicated the human skin by creating a 2-layer model including epidermis and dermis layers. While the mice skin model consisted of a one-layer dermis due to the significantly small thickness of skin. My study focuses on the hemostasis stage, particularly the clothing stage at both half a clot and a whole clot. I have analyzed the stress that these different wounds experience as the clot progresses. My results show that both human and mice wound tissues experience higher stresses for diabetic conditions while elderly skins experience the lowest stress values. Our further analysis reveals that both the properties of skin layers and their thickness are impacting the stress magnitude and distribution with the wound tissues. This research will help us have a better understating of the complex biological process involved in wound healing in both humans and mice. Findings of this thesis project will allow us to have a better understanding of macro-level wound healing mechanisms, in different healing faces.
Recommended Citation
Alonso, Andrea, "Biomechanical Modeling of Progressive Wound Healing: Elderly and Diabetic Skin" (2024). Theses and Dissertations. 3544.
https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/3544