How is electricity being used in wound care?

Some wounds just don't seem to heal. Now, pioneering medical research has come up with some promising new treatments that employ electricity to speed recovery, killing bacteria more effectively than traditional bandages or antibiotics. Here's a brief summary of these dramatic new developments in healthcare.  Medical research is providing revolutionary new wound care treatments that use electricity to speed healing. The problem: slow-healing or no-healing wounds Physicians and emergency room specialists have long been stymied by chronic wounds that resist most efforts to treat them using conventional antibiotics. Researchers at The Ohio State University recently tried a new approach, based on "electroceuticals," which are devices that use electrical impulses to treat wounds. Ohio State said its study is the first of its kind to look at the ways electroceutical bandages kill bacteria around a wound, allowing it to heal faster. Breaking down the barrier According to Ohio State's Shaurya Prakash, co-author of the study, the research team found that slow-healing injuries have a barrier of microorganisms (including bacteria) that live on the surface of the wound. The barrier is like a film made up of extracellular polymeric substances, generally fats and proteins, which keep the bacteria safe from antibiotics and other clinical treatment options. The solution that Ohio State's research team created involved a bandage made of haboti silk (a common J...
Source: Advanced Tissue - Category: Dermatology Authors: Tags: Wound Care Wound healing Wound Infection Source Type: news