Treatment of Various Surfaces with Silver and its Compounds for Topical Wound Dressings, Catheter and Other Biomedical Applications

Abstract

The applications of surfaces treated with silver and its compounds include devices used as topical wound dressings, urinary catheters, endotracheal tubes, cardiac valves etc. Treatment of surfaces e.g. textile, polymers or metals with silver or its compounds is carried out to achieve the antimicrobial action of silver ions. Several approaches of surface treatment of medical devices for the antimicrobial purposes, such as electrodeposition, electroless deposition, physical vapor deposition, γ - radiation, etc. have been used in practice. It is clear that only silver ions are responsible for the antimicrobial activity. As confirmed experimentally, only samples containing silver compounds can deliberate silver ions in the tested media and exhibit antimicrobial activity both in vitro and in vivo. There is no evidence that elemental silver, even its so-called "nano-crystalline" state, exhibits an antimicrobial activity. Consequently, the devices coated with "nano-crystalline" silver should carefully be taken into consideration before the application.