Advanced dressings will turn medicine
Topics: Invention, Technology
A "smart" wound dressing developed by Australian researchers can detect the progression of infection without causing pain to patients with burns, skin grafts and chronic wounds, Xinhua reports. The dressing is made of silk with nanodiamonds, which makes it sensitive to the temperature rise in the wound (an early sign of infection).
The researchers said the new technology solves the problems doctors currently face when treating wounds. They need to check regularly for infection by looking for signs of redness, fever, and swelling, removing bandages and examining the patient. However, as soon as these visual signs appear, inflammation and infection are already severely developed.
The new technology will help clinicians detect infections earlier and non-invasively without the painful dressing removal procedure. Thanks to the addition of diamonds, a material well known for its ability to detect biological temperature with high precision, the new technology allows doctors to check the condition of a wound without ever touching it.
“By embedding nanodiamonds in silk fibers using an electrospinning process, we have been able to develop a wound dressing that recognizes infections. Temperature measurement opens up the possibility of non-invasive monitoring of the wound by clinicians who can obtain information about the condition of the wound based on the temperature readings of nanodiamonds. The new material also showed extremely high antibacterial resistance to gram-negative bacteria, which play an important role in wound infections, and the ability to maintain the flow of oxygen and nutrients to the wound, "the report says.
