Development of smart bandages from gelidium extract for efficient wound healing

Abstract

The prolonged and acute wound healing processes continue to remain a clinical issue due to the risk associated with the presence of infection, lack of efficient wound evaluation tools, and requirement of efficient and sustainable patient therapeutic interventions. Traditional wound coverings offer passive protection and can lack real-time monitoring of infection, pH changes, and healing status, which can compromise the treatment outcomes. The necessity to make medical device designs more environmentally friendly, mitigate antimicrobial resistance, and monitor healing have resulted in a rise in the demand of intelligent wound dressings for several environmentally friendly ones. This study therefore seeks to address these gaps by coming up with a smart biochromic therapeutic dressing that is formulated using natural beetroot stalk and Gelidium acerosa extract that have pH-sensitive colorimetric sensing and bioactive release to enhance wound management at large scale.