The prototype of the "smart patch"
A "smart" patch will help with non-healing chronic wounds
Natalia Pelezneva, Naked Science
American researchers have developed a patch capable of independently monitoring the condition of chronic wounds and treating them with the necessary medications at the right time. A prototype of such a patch was tested on bacterial cultures. A description of the development was published in the journal Small (Mostafalu et al., Smart Bandage for Monitoring and Treatment of Chronic Wounds).
Chronic wounds are skin injuries that do not heal in the expected time. Their healing can be expected for several years, and some of these defects do not go away at all. Such wounds appear for various reasons: due to inflammatory processes, constant pressure on the skin (pressure sores) or the development of necrosis. They also occur in some diseases, including diabetes mellitus.
The authors of the new technology have created a device that analyzes several important indicators of the wound condition. The "smart" patch contains a temperature sensor that measures the difference between the temperature of the wound itself and the skin around it: a significant difference may indicate inflammation. Another element is the pH meter, which analyzes the hydrogen damage index (the pH of a normally healing wound rarely rises above 6.5). The third component reveals the degree of oxygen saturation of the blood. The data of all sensors is processed by a microprocessor. If measurements show that the inflammatory process in the wound has intensified, the patch begins to gradually heat up, releasing a portion of medicine – for example, an antibiotic.
Device operation diagram / © Small
The thickness of the patch does not exceed three millimeters. According to scientists, the devices will be inexpensive – most of their components are cheap, with the exception of microprocessors, but they can be reused. Today, the technology is at the prototype stage, it has already been tested on a culture of keratinocytes (the main cells of the epidermis of human skin) containing Staphylococcus aureus: these bacteria often interfere with the healing of chronic wounds. In the future, scientists plan to conduct tests involving people with various chronic wounds.
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