**5. Wound healing**

Wound healing, which is a normal physiological process, takes places in four particular phases: hemostasis, inflammation, proliferation, and remodeling. For a successful healing process, all four phases must follow in the appropriate sequence and time. Numerous factors can put adverse effects on different phases of this process, resulting in an inappropriate wound healing process. The most important factors that influence healing of the cutaneous wound and the potential cellular and/or molecular mechanisms involved consist of local and systemic factors. Local factors include oxygenation, infections, foreign bodies, and venous sufficiency, whereas systemic factors comprise age and gender, sex hormones, stress, diseases, such as diabetes mellitus (DM), keloids, fibrosis, hereditary healing disorders, jaundice, uremia, obesity, medications (glucocorticoid steroids, nonsteroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs), chemotherapy, alcoholism, and smoking, as well as immunocompromised conditions (cancer, radiation therapy, AIDS, and nutrition). A better understanding of the effects of these factors on the wound healing process may lead to therapeutics that accelerate wound healing and resolve impaired wounds. However, the influences of these factors are not mutually exclusive. One or multiple factors may play a role in any of the individual phases by contributing to the overall outcome of the healing process [8].
