Fabrication of innovative wound exudates dissolvable electrospun povidone-iodine loaded poly (Ɛ-caprolactone)-poly (ethylene oxide) composite nanofiber mat based wound bandages

Abstract

Changing of bandage when nursing chronic wounds is a necessary exercise that encourages effective wound healing but often the bandage gets stuck to the wound, making changing it painful and uncomfortable. Furthermore, most of the wound medicine that is usually smeared on the bandage gets thrown away with the removed bandage unused. To deal with these challenges, we fabricated an innovative, dissolvable, drug releasing bandage based on electrospun povidone iodine (pvpi) blended poly (Ɛ-caprolactone), PCL-poly (ethylene oxide), PEO, composite nanofiber mats. From the experiments, smooth, yellow coloured nanofiber mats of calculated average fiber diameters of 341 nm were obtained from electrospinning an optimized 80:20 (v/v) PCL: PEO composite solution, blended with an optimized quantity of pvpi acting as model medicine incorporated in the structure of the nanofiber mats. From the performance evaluation results, the electrospun composite nanofiber mats excelled in releasing over 50% of the loaded pvpi over prolonged drug release time of 210 min which compared well with 200 min we reported in our previous work. Additionally, the composite nanofiber mats proved to be hydrophilic, influenced by the incorporation of the hydrophilic pvpi and PEO within the composite mats. Furthermore, the nanofiber mats gradually dissolved in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), that was employed as wound exudate mimic, just under 24 h qualifying them as wound exudates-dissolvable nanofiber bandages that could revolutionize the bandage history and make wound care management free from bandage changes as well as totally removing medicine wastage during bandage changing and improving medicine efficacy during wound dressing.
 Keywords: Chronic wounds, Wound exudates, Electrospinning, Polymer composite nanofibers, Electrospun nanofiber bandages, Innovative drug delivery bandages, Dissolvable nanostructured bandages