Wound

It can be difficult for people such as army medics, carrying an assortment of bandages in every shape and size. Thanks to recent research, however, they may one day simply be able to spray medication-laced fiber dressings directly onto wounds.

When someone has a severe burn, a protective covering needs to be temporarily grafted onto the wound site. Although that covering typically consists of skin from a human cadaver, live-cell pig skin has now been used on a patient for the first time.

​Most people think of turmeric as a kitchen spice, or perhaps as a health supplement that's taken orally. Now, however, scientists have incorporated curcumin – a compound extracted FROM turmeric – into a porous foam that's designed to heal skin wounds with a minimum of scarring.

A number of research groups around the world have already produced promising experimental versions of futuristic bandages that could take our healing game to the next level. Here’s a look at some of the more interesting examples.

Slapping on a Band-Aid is the easiest way to help a cut on your skin heal, but things aren’t so simple for internal wounds. Now, researchers from Harvard have developed spray-on hydrogels, produced by bacteria, that can help heal these internal wounds.

​With a few experimental exceptions, bandages generally just cover wounds, as opposed to actively healing them. That's not the case with a new heat-activated "active adhesive dressing" (AAD), however, which forgoes antibiotics while mimicking embryonic skin.

An incredible study has demonstrated the potential of a wound dressing that can fight bacterial infections using a weak electrical field. Offering a novel way to battle antibiotic-resistant infections, the dressing has been approved by the FDA and is currently being tested in human burn patients.

​For many years now, scientists have been seeking methods of helping to heal chronic wounds such as those suffered by diabetics. One of the latest possible techniques involves re-engineering the membranes of stem cells, so that those cells essentially get welded together.

To help patch up large wounds that might normally require a skin graft, researchers at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) have developed a new bioprinter that can print dual layers of a patient’s own skin directly into a wound.

Scientists have come up with a molecule that can spur different cells into action throughout different stages of wound healing, enabling a new kind of dynamic technology that could be channeled into materials that respond to the task at hand.

​When McGill University's Dr. Sheila Wang was in medical school, she noticed that doctors simply used rulers to measure patients' diabetic skin ulcers. Figuring that there had to be a more precise, objective method of doing so, she went on to create the new Swift Skin and Wound app.

​We all know how painful ripping off a band-aid can be. It may not be so unpleasant in the not-too-distant future, however, as scientists have created an adhesive that detaches in the presence of ultraviolet light.