A Novel Wound Management Strategy with Silver-coated Vacuum Dressing on Infected Wound: In Vitro Study

Abstract

Background: Nowadays, although Negative Pressure Wound Therapy’s (NPWT) efficacy on healing wounds is widely known, it still has limited applications on infected wounds. Meanwhile, silver-containing foam dressings have been used for infected wounds ever since silver established a notable place in the material industry for its antibacterial properties. In this study, we design an experiment to investigate quantitatively the efficacy of silver-coated dressing materials and its antibacterial effects. Methods: We prepared a NPWT device with silver-coated foam (Curavac®) and freeze-dried standard laboratory strains that are common wound pathogens: S. aureus (ATCC 25923), methicillin-resistant S. aureus (KCTC 3881), E. coli (KCTC 2571) and P. aeruginosa (KCTC 2513) bacteria and bouillon culture-medium, which were provided by the Hospital Microbiology laboratory. All reagents were used as-is without further purifications. Each pathogen was divided into five groups: 1) control, 2) pathogen with conventional pore foam (without pressure), 3) pathogen with silver-coated foam (without pressure), 4) pathogen with conventional pore foam (with pressure), and 5) pathogen with silver-coated foam (with pressure). The number of bacterial colonies in each agar plate was evaluated after 72 hours by applying dressings and measuring inhibition zones. Results: The number of bacterial colonies of the a silver-coated foam group was significantly lower than the control group except one pathogen (E. coli) without pressure, and the bacterial colonies of silver-coated foam were significantly lower in all pathogen groups with pressure. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that the antibacterial effects of silver-coated dressing materials using quantitative analysis. Severely injured patients often develop wound infections, for which there is no obvious therapeutic approach yet. This study can suggest a novel wound management tool for such patients while also expecting to achieve faster surgical intervention with definite antibacterial effects.