Dressings

It's a sad fact that burn victims often feel a great deal of pain when the dressings on their wounds are removed. A new hydrogel-based dressing could change that, however, as it easily releases from the skin when cooled.

It's ironic that in order to check if a wound is becoming infected, doctors may end up setting back the healing process by removing the dressing. An experimental new dressing is designed to help, as it changes color if an infection is occurring.

The days of ripping off a Band-Aid could soon be in the past, with scientists creating a new affordable, flexible electronic covering that not only speeds and wirelessly monitors healing but is harmlessly absorbed into the body when its job is done.

Skin-applied microneedle patches are already used to painlessly deliver medication and detect chemicals in a patient's bloodstream. A new one, however, reportedly stops wounds from bleeding much more effectively than traditional bandages.

Chronic diabetic skin wounds are notoriously slow to heal, sometimes becoming so infected that amputations are required. A newly identified polymer could help keep that from happening, by radically boosting the healing process.

Getting a bandage to stick to your skin can sometimes be difficult, particularly if that skin is wet. This isn't a problem with an experimental new wound dressing however, which uses ultrasound-induced microbubbles to better bond with the skin.

Chronic skin ulcers are notoriously slow to heal, but an otherwise-wasted material may soon help change that. Scientists at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University have developed a new regenerative wound dressing, and it's made from frog skin.

Scientists at Brown University have developed a new material that can release drugs only when pathogenic bacteria are around. When used as a bandage, the hydrogel could deliver medication on-demand when infection begins to take hold.

Although silver is highly effective at killing bacteria, it can also be toxic to humans in large amounts. That's where a new wound dressing is intended to come in, as it only releases its silver payload when infections are present.

When removing the dressing to check on a chronic wound, you ironically often set back the healing process. A new type of "smart bandage" was designed with this problem in mind, as it transmits wound data to an app on a clinician's mobile device.

If you're trying to make a wound dressing that will be well-tolerated by the human body, you may be best off using human-derived materials. That's the approach that German researchers have taken, creating a tropoelastin-based bandage.

Chronic wounds can be very difficult to treat, potentially leading to amputations or even death due to associated infections. A new dressing, however, may be able to heal such wounds while remaining much less expensive than other materials.