Effects of Wound Dressing's Vapor and Gas Permeability on Ischemic Ulcer Healing
Project Description:
Peripheral arterial disease affects more than 200 million people worldwide and is a major contributor to the public health burden, with US hospitalization costs exceeding $6.3 billion per year. Although perfusion to the lower limbs can be restored surgically with angioplasty or bypass grafting, ischemic ulcers caused by arterial insufficiency of the lower extremities are difficult to heal with basic therapy and require special treatments. The healing of severe ulcers remains a major medical problem due to the depth of the lesion, age and inflammation-related changes in tissue regenerative capacity, and the tendency of the wound to become infected. To reduce the risk of infection, traditional therapies keep the wound dry using dressings and topical agents that rapidly absorb exudate, but excessive drying complicates healing, especially during a period when the blood flow to the capillary bed is still compromised.
To address these issues, we developed a novel wound dressing made of biopolymer nanofibers with a minimal concentration of synthetic fiber-forming additives using electrospinning. We hypothesize that enhanced water vapor and gas permeability of nanofibrous wound dressing improves the healing of ischemic ulcers, and the proposed research will allow determining the optimal parameters to accelerate tissue regeneration. First, we will quantify the effects of porosity, thickness, and average nanofiber diameter on the permeability properties of our wound dressings using bench-top experiments. Second, we will determine the influence of the permeability properties on ischemic wound healing in a preclinical swine model. Our research will stimulate new approaches to wound management that would go beyond conventional occlusive and semi-occlusive dressings that require frequent changing, and will offer highly permeable, biodegradable, cost-effective, and atraumatic solutions to healing of many chronic wounds, including ischemic, venous, diabetic foot, and pressure ulcers that suffer from similar clinical complications.