Time doesn鈥檛 heal all wounds. Chronic wounds that don鈥檛 heal on their own require constant and intensive monitoring and treatment, and a new smart bandage may be able to help.
Some types of injuries, like burns or diabetic wounds, heal slowly and are thus extremely prone to infection. Ali Tamayol at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and his colleagues developed a high-tech new bandage that can detect infection and inflammation, and treat it without requiring constant check-ins with medical professionals.
The bandage contains two kinds of sensors. The first is a pH sensor that can detect when bacteria infect a wound, as this turn its pH from acidic to alkaline. And the second is a temperature sensor, which can tell when the area is getting hot and inflamed. The sensors are embedded in a sheet of hydrogel, a super-absorbent jelly material, which soaks up any blood seeping from the wound.
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The hydrogel can also hold tiny capsules full of antibiotics or other medicine. That way, when the sensors find signs of infection, a tiny heater can be triggered to warm up the bandage and release the antibiotics. The whole thing is attached to transparent medical tape, and it鈥檚 less than 3 millimetres thick.
鈥淔or people who live far away from medical facilities or do not have immediate access, the bandage can transmit data to those medical settings so if there鈥檚 need for intervention they can call the patient in, but it can also automatically respond if needed,鈥� says Tamayol.
The researchers performed a battery of tests on the bandage, including testing it on human cells contaminated with bacteria. It killed more than 90 per cent of the bacteria, bringing the pH of the cells back up to its normal value.
One benefit of this system is that it can apply antibiotics only to the spots that need them, says Tamayol. By applying the medication only where and when it is needed and automatically shutting off when the bacteria are gone, it will also use less medicine and so is less likely to cause antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria in the wound, he says.
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