Antimicrobial silver sulphate loaded foam product safety testing problem

Advanced dressing products providing antimicrobial properties can improve healing rates, alleviating suffering, and ongoing healthcare costs. Some wounds represent more clinically severe (acute) situations such as large area burns/scalds or significant wounds on patients less able to fight off infections. In such situations, high risk of wound infection represents risk to life, necessitating the use of premium dressing products with powerful antimicrobial properties. Such products carry higher expense (both manufacture and end-user costs), but their use is justifiable to reduce mortality rates in high-risk situations.

There is market demand for a more moderate-cost antimicrobial wound dressing product, intended for use in sub-acute, but hard to heal wounds, where the risk of chronic infection leading to longer term wound care is significant. Specifically, there is market-pull for a polyurethane foam product employing a silver-based antimicrobial action. The improved wound dressing product that this work relates to, is designed to directly address this market need by providing a line-development of our existing polyurethane foam-based product family.

The innovative nature of the antimicrobial product must be well understood in terms of its compatibility with living tissue and its overall safety. Full understanding of these characteristics requires analysis of the physical and chemical nature of the product as may be expected from intended use. The scientific analytical methods required to obtain this information are not available off-the-shelf and A4I funding will allow us to identify and access the most appropriate cutting-edge analytical expertise and methods provided within the UK national measurement system.