Abstract
BackgroundWe investigated the physicochemical properties of Medifoam® N and its wound healing performance compared to other commercially available polyurethane (PU) foam dressing in vitro and in vivo to gain insight in their clinical performance.MethodsWound contact layer and cross-section of eleven polyurethane foam dressings were assessed with field-emission scanning electron microscope. Thickness, density, tensile strength, elongation, moisture-vapor transmission rate (MVTR), retention and absorptivity were measured to compare physical properties. Phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) solution absorption patterns were compared. An animal model for wound-healing was applied to validate in vitro findings.ResultsAmong eleven tested foam dressings, Medifoam® N has the smallest pore and cell sizes with excellent uniformity, i.e. it has 25 ~ 75 μm on the wound contact layer and 100 ~ 350 μm in the cross-section while other dressings have a larger pose size with larger variability. Compared to other PU foams, Medifoam® N also has moderate thickness, density, tensile strength, elongation and MVTR. Furthermore, it has excellent fluid absorption and retention capacity. These intrinsic properties of Medifoam® N contributed to improve fluid absorption patterns, i.e. other dressing material flawed out PBS solution on the dressings while Medifoam® N retained all the tested solutions. In animal wound-healing study, Medifoam® N treated animals showed excellent angiogenesis and collagen deposition even though epithelial recovery rate was not significantly different to other dressings.ConclusionsMedifoam® N has optimized physical properties and thus improved fluid absorption/retention capacity. Compared to other dressings, Medifoam® N showed excellent fluid absorption patterns and these characteristics contributed to improved wound healing and excellent angiogenic potential. We found that Medifoam® N showed the best results among the employed dressing samples.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40824-016-0063-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
We investigated the physicochemical properties of Medifoam® N and its wound healing performance compared to other commercially available polyurethane (PU) foam dressing in vitro and in vivo to gain insight in their clinical performance
Except Medifoam® N, all dressings have non-homogeneous pore sizes and morphologies and pore sizes ranged from 169 μm to 1000 μm
Product L and P showed almost similar absorption capacity as well as Medifoam®N, i.e. they have relatively higher porosity with homogeneous pore size. These properties must be influenced to increase absorption capacity. Their porous structure in cross-section was relatively loose compared to Medifoam®N and these properties must be the reason for the lower retention capacity
Summary
We investigated the physicochemical properties of Medifoam® N and its wound healing performance compared to other commercially available polyurethane (PU) foam dressing in vitro and in vivo to gain insight in their clinical performance. Key objectives in wound healing are the reduction of infection and pain as well as the promotion of tissue repair [1,2,3]. Junker et al, reported the importance of the microenvironment to wound healing [9] They emphasized that a wet, incubator-like microenvironment is important to provide the fastest healing with fewest aberrations and least scar formation. Doillon reported the importance of porous structure on the wound tissue infiltration in vivo as well as cell growth in vitro [10]. The use of inappropriate wound dressings can contribute to the development of infection or the formation of excessive scar tissue, which significantly undermines a proper healing process [3, 13]. Exudate containment is regarded to an importance factor in the quality-oflife problems since excessive exudate leads to malodor and leakage resulting in loss of sleep, depression, and social isolation in affected patients [14]
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