Exploring Hyaluronic Acid as a Potential Standard Dressing for Burn Wound

Abstract

A massive loss of dermis layer such as in deep burn wounds brings several important consequences and complications which contribute to major problems, personally and economically, for the burn patients and their families. Ideal burn wound treatment should not focus merely on removing devitalized tissue, controlling bacterial growth, and promoting healing, but also on accelerating the healing process and preventing scar-related complications. The evolution of biomaterial science for burn wounds has provided physicians with novel dressing materials based on natural and also synthetic polymers, and the latest development introduces the use of hyaluronic acid (HA) as a potential burn wound dressing. HA has been studied to have involvement in many phases of the wound healing process, such as inflammation, granulation, and re-epithelialization. Dealing with the unfavorable physical properties of the native polymer such as solubility and rapid degradation, modification and improvement are designed to produce insoluble molecules to facilitate hyaluronic acid-based (HA-based) wound dressing products as a valuable option for the treatment of deep burns. Our literature review shares the development and the outcome of the use of these products in burns. The currently available clinical experience suggests that these HA-based wound dressing products provide a safe therapeutic method useful for the treatment of acute burns and minimize scar-related complications, although further improvements are still required to make an ideal HA-based wound dressing product for standard burn wound treatment.