Integrated sensing and delivery of oxygen for next-generation smart wound dressings

Manuel Ochoa,Binu Baby Narakathu,Mark Michael Oscai,Dinesh Maddipatla,Oscar W Cummings,Massood Z Atashbar,Rahim Rahimi,Babak Ziaie,Hongjie Jiang,Vaibhav Jain,Thaddeus Joseph Morken,Gonzalo L Campana,Michael A Zieger,Chang Keun Yoon,Rajiv Sood,Jiawei Zhou,Rebeca Hannah Oliveira

doi:10.1038/s41378-020-0141-7

Abstract

Chronic wounds affect over 6.5 million Americans and are notoriously difficult to treat. Suboptimal oxygenation of the wound bed is one of the most critical and treatable wound management factors, but existing oxygenation systems do not enable concurrent measurement and delivery of oxygen in a convenient wearable platform. Thus, we developed a low-cost alternative for continuous O2 delivery and sensing comprising of an inexpensive, paper-based, biocompatible, flexible platform for locally generating and measuring oxygen in a wound region. The platform takes advantage of recent developments in the fabrication of flexible microsystems including the incorporation of paper as a substrate and the use of a scalable manufacturing technology, inkjet printing. Here, we demonstrate the functionality of the oxygenation patch, capable of increasing oxygen concentration in a gel substrate by 13% (5 ppm) in 1 h. The platform is able to sense oxygen in a range of 5–26 ppm. In vivo studies demonstrate the biocompatibility of the patch and its ability to double or triple the oxygen level in the wound bed to clinically relevant levels.

Highlights

Chronic non-healing wounds impact over 6.5 million Americans per year, costs in excess of $25 billion to treat on an annual basis, and are on the rise due to increasing levels of obesity and diabetes compounded by an aging population[1,2]
The work presented in this manuscript serves as a proof-of-concept demonstration of an integrated lowcost, mass-producible wound dressing for simultaneous generation, delivery, and sensing of oxygen in the wound bed
The materials and fabrication process have been carefully developed to allow the creation of a biocompatible wound dressing with multiple functions in a commercially-scalable manner

Summary

Introduction

Chronic non-healing wounds (e.g., diabetic foot and bed sores) impact over 6.5 million Americans per year, costs in excess of $25 billion to treat on an annual basis, and are on the rise due to increasing levels of obesity and diabetes compounded by an aging population[1,2]. A key part of the regimen is regular replacement of wound dressings (some of which contain therapeutic/antibacterial agents)[4,5,6,7,8] and the use of negative pressure wound therapy[9,10]. To completely understand the efficacy and limitations of a dressing technology, it is important to be able to monitor its effects on the wound quantitatively. In order to bring wound care to the 21st century, it is important to develop more advanced dressings that can integrate sensors (pH, oxygen, and inflammatory mediators), drug/cell delivery (antibiotics, growth factors, stem cells, and oxygen), and electronic intelligence; such integration can drastically improve wound care by measuring individual responses and enabling appropriate adjustments to therapy[8,11]

Methods

Results

Conclusion