Electric bandage speeds recovery

American and Korean researchers have developed an inexpensive bandage that uses an electric field to promote healing in chronic wounds.

Chronic wounds are open wounds that heal slowly, if at all, and these wounds are worrying because they often recur after treatment and significantly increase the risk to patients of amputation and death.

“Our goal here was to develop a far less expensive technology that accelerates healing in patients with chronic wounds,” says Amay Bandodkar, co-corresponding author of the work and an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University, USA. “We also wanted to make sure that the technology is easy enough for people to use at home, rather than something that patients can only receive in clinical settings.”

Specifically, the team developed water-powered, electronics-free dressings (WPEDs), which are disposable dressings that have electrodes on one side and a small, biocompatible magnesium-silver/silver chloride battery battery on the other. The dressing is applied so that the electrodes come into contact with the wound. A drop of water is then applied to the battery, activating it. Once activated, the bandage produces an electric field for several hours.

The electrodes are designed to allow them to bend with the bandage and conform to the surface of the wounds, which are often deep and irregularly shaped.

The paper, Water-powered, electronics-free dressings that electrically stimulate wounds for rapid wound closure, is published in the open-access journal Science Advances.