HYDROGEL SEALS WOUNDS THEN RELEASES (Orthopedics This Week)
Everyone of a certain age remembers the pain of a doctor’s stripping off adhesive tape from a wound. Now a chemist, Professor Mark Grinstaff, Ph.D., his students and Harvard Medical School Assistant Professors of Orthopedic Surgery Edward K. Rodriguez, M.D. and Ara Nazarian, Dr.Sc. have developed a hydrogel that not only seals wounds but can then be dissolved and gently removed from the site of the injury.
As explained by writer Mark Dwortzan in BU Biomedical Engineering, the gel is intended for use with wounds that must be quickly closed to stem blood loss and prevent infection, but then later reopened for additional treatment. The developers of the gel say that their wound closure system is the first that will not only stop bleeding for several hours, adhere to the wound site, be easy to apply and also be simple to remove when other procedures are called for.
“Today’s trauma wound closure materials, once applied, must later be cut out,” said Grinstaff. “We’ve introduced a mild process for removing a hydrogel sealant from a wound where there’s no cutting or scraping involved.”
The idea for a wound-sealing reversible hydro...
