The treatment of wounds is expensive and challenging. Most of the available wound dressings are not effective and suffer from limitations such as poor antimicrobial activity, toxicity, inability to provide suitable moisture to the wound and poor mechanical performance. The use of inappropriate wound dressings can result in a delayed wound healing process. Nanosize range scaffolds have triggered great attention because of their attractive properties, which include their capability to deliver bioactive agents, high surface area, improved mechanical properties, mimic the extracellular matrix (ECM), and high porosity. Nanofibrous materials can be further encapsulated/loaded with metal-based nanoparticles to enhance their therapeutic outcomes in wound healing applications. The widely studied metal-based nanoparticles, silver nanoparticles exhibit good properties such as outstanding antibacterial activity, display antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties, support cell growth, making it an essential bioactive agent in wound dressings. This review article reports the biological (in vivo and in vitro) and mechanical outcomes of nanofibrous scaffolds loaded with silver nanoparticles on wound healing.

Several factors, such as bacterial infections, underlying conditions, malnutrition, obesity, ageing, and smoking are the most common issues that cause a delayed process of wound healing. Developing wound dressings that promote an accelerated wound healing process and skin regeneration is crucial. The properties of wound dressings that make them suitable for the acceleration of the wound healing process include good antibacterial efficacy, excellent biocompatibility, and non-toxicity, the ability to provide a moist environment, stimulating cell migration and adhesion, and providing gaseous permeation. Biopolymers have demonstrated features appropriate for the development of effective wound dressing scaffolds. Gellan gum is one of the biopolymers that has attracted great attention in biomedical applications. The wound dressing materials fabricated from gellan gum possess outstanding properties when compared to traditional dressings, such as good biocompatibility, biodegradability, non-toxicity, renewability, and stable nature. This biopolymer has been broadly employed for the development of wound dressing scaffolds in different forms. This review discusses the physicochemical and biological properties of gellan gum-based scaffolds in the management of wounds.

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