Textile-based smart wound dressings

Efforts have been made during the last few years towards the development of new artificial wound coverings which will meet the requirements necessary for the treatment of major skin wounds. Research has been mainly focused on achieving the specifications of an ideal wound dressing, such as hydrogel technologies providing products suitable for applications in biomedical, personal care as well as nano-sensor. But as the hydrogels have low mechanical strength, recent trends have come up in the form of composite membranes, where a textile material is coated with the polymer solution. The fabric reinforcement provides strength to the dressing and the drug loaded dressings offer precise control of the release behavior. The present paper reviews various efforts made on the textile based composite structures for their applications as wound dressings, based on the current research and existing products.