Recent Progress of Highly Adhesive Hydrogels as Wound Dressings

Abstract

Wound dressings are widely used to promote wound healing. Traditional dressings need the help of tape to fix onto the wounds, which are not suitable in the human body. In addition, hemostasis of internal wounds is usually treated with direct sutures which will cause secondary trauma to the patient and increase the risk of infection. Therefore, development of new dressings with high tissue adhesion and biocompatibility is of great clinical significance. The highly adhesive wound dressings can firmly attach to external and internal wounds, and form a barrier to prevent bacterial invasion, accelerate healing, and avoid secondary damage caused by sutures. Hydrogels are soft materials that possess a 3D network structure with tunable physical and chemical properties, which provides ideal conditions to support the wound healing process. In this review, we summarize the recent advances in developing hydrogel-based wound dressings as well as their adhesion mechanism. Moreover, the prospects of these wound dressings over the coming years are also covered.

Architecting polyelectrolyte hydrogels with Cu-assisted polydopamine nanoparticles for photothermal antibacterial therapy

“…Besides, some additional functions offered by the CPAP/PDA@Cu hydrogel at the wound site, such as hemostasis ( Fig. 6 A), gas exchange, adsorption of exudate, acting as a physical barrier, and serving as a cell scaffold, also had benefits for improving skin regeneration [ 45 , 53 ].…”

Exploration of Bioengineered Scaffolds Composed of Thermo-Responsive Polymers for Drug Delivery in Wound Healing

“…This allows the in situ formation of scaffolds, minimizing the employment of invasive methods, and representing a novel and advanced drug delivery system especially for subcutaneous application [206][207][208][209]. Hydrogels possess a 3D structure that can be modified in terms of their physicochemical properties to obtain a firmly attached scaffold to the external and internal wound [210]. The technique involves mixing the thermo-responsive polymer with the API at room temperature for subsequent injection into the body.…”

Multi-crosslinking hydrogels with robust bio-adhesion and pro-coagulant activity for first-aid hemostasis and infected wound healing

“…Unfortunately, insufficient mechanical and adhesive strength have still restricted the applications of polysaccharide-based hydrogels in tissue adhesion and hemostasis. As a result, to improve their mechanical property and tissue adhesion is in urgent need [ 26 , 27 ]. The photocuring strategy, with the advantages of in situ curing, easy control and use, has been applied in dentistry, industrial and other fields [ [28] , [29] , [30] , [31] ].…”