DEVELOPING AN IN SITU SPRAYABLE BIOSCAFFOLD WITH ANTIMICROBIAL PROPERTIES AS AN EMERGENCY BURN WOUND DRESSING

Abstract

Commercially available silver dressings and their associated application/removal protocols suffer from several serious drawbacks, including: inability to monitor the burn wound beneath the opaque dressing, high costs, traumatic debridement due to a non-degradable mesh, delays involved with transporting a patient to a location where sterile conditions can be maintained, and restrictions upon when a silver dressing can be used. The results of this work present a promising proof of concept for an in situ sprayable synthetic polymer containing a silver salt that was found to allow for wound observation (transitions to clear at body temperature), degrade in a biocompatible manner, release broad-spectrum antimicrobial silver in a controlled manner, and can be safely applied in the acute period following a burn in the absence of sterile conditions with little detriment to wound healing in vivo and less than 20% reduced viability in vitro.