This e-bandage could make the wounds heal faster
Posted on: 27/Dec/2018 9:40:10 AM
Many developments have been taking place in the field of medicine. A self powered bandage has been developed and it could create an electric field over an injury. This e-bandage was developed by some researchers belonging to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. The sensational information that was gathered was the e-bandage could reduce the healing time of the wounds in us.
Normally it takes around 12 days for a wound to heal when the wound is covered by a closed bandage without any electric field. When the wound is covered by this e-bandage then the wound got healed in just 3 days. The studies were published in the journal ‘ACS Nano’.
The point is since 1960’s the researchers have been observing that the electric stimulation could help in healing wounds in the skin but its application was limited. The reason being the equipment for creating electric field requires the patient to be hospitalised. The important point is the researchers wanted mainly to develop a flexible self powered bandage that could convert skin movement to therapeutic electric field.
The researchers developed a wearable nano generator by overlapping the sheets of PTFE or polytetrafluoroethylene, copper foil and PET or polyethylene terephthalate. This was to power the e-bandage. During the normal activities or during breathing, movement of the skin takes place is known. The nano generator converted these skin movements to small electric pulses. A weak electric field was produced by keeping the electrodes on both sides of the skin wound and current flowed to these 2 working electrodes. Testing was done by the research team by using a rat having back wounds. The researchers found the fact that the wounds covered by e-bandages healed faster than the wounds with covered bandage having no electric field. The enhanced fibroblast migration, proliferation and differentiation induced by the electric field were responsible for the healing of the wound at faster rates.
