Biomarkers for precision medicine in phlebology and wound care: A systematic review

INTRODUCTION: Precision medicine (PM) represents a tailored management based on specific patient biological and medical characteristics, at a highly detailed level, including disease screening, monitoring relapse and/or recurrence, selection and/or prediction of effective drug and/or surgical treatment. PM may be applied to Phlebology and Wound Care area and the aim of this review is to analyze the most updated information on this topic. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: The following key words were used to search the literature: "precision medicine and phlebology/venous disease," "precision medicine and wound care," "biomarkers and phlebology/venous disease," "biomarkers and wound care." All of those studies which did not fit the query or which reported insufficient data were excluded. EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: Of the 6845 records yielded by the search, after duplicate removing and after excluded records in title and abstract, 250 articles were left, which matched fulfilled the inclusion criteria. After reading the articles in full text, 203 were excluded because: 1) not responding properly to our research questions; 2) insufficient data; thefinal set included 47 articles. CONCLUSIONS: In the context of phlebology and wound care, PM, through the use of measurable biomarkers coming from omics analysis, may be used in selecting the appropriate treatment, in evaluating response to treatment, and in monitoring recurrences. Thus, a tailored medical approach to patients with vein and chronic wound disease may be useful in order lower the high incidence of important clinical conditions that have great socio-economic impact on the general population.