Dressings used in wound care

Wound management is intended to restore physiological status to the wound bed that favours wound healing. A numbers of factors can influence wound healing including stress, medications, alcoholic intake, smoking, nutrition, oxygenation, age, sex hormones, comorbidities such as diabetes and obesity, infection and wound colonization. A better understanding of the influence of all these factors on repair could lead to therapeutics that impact on the wound healing process. Wound dressings with different properties are used extensively to help facilitate wound healing by keeping the wound moist without being saturated, allowing evaporation of exudate and acting as a barrier to infection. Some dressings also have added antimicrobial properties to help reduce bacterial bioburden and infection, without inhibiting wound healing. Antimicrobial agents included in modern wound dressings are silver, chlorhexidine, iodine, polyhexamethylene biguanide (PHMB) and honey.