Status and future scope of hydrogels in wound healing

Wound healing is complex process that involves several phases with a final aim to reconstruct the corrupted human tissue. To reduce the healing time non-toxic, biocompatible and non-sensitizing dressings are used. They have to possess desired mechanics, activate immune cells, promote remodeling of damaged tissue, hydrate wound bed and absorb the excess of the tissue fluids. Also, they have to prevent wound infection and thereby reduce the healing duration and associated costs and enhance the overall success of wound healing. Hydrogel dressings are leading, promising, and still rising area in wound care, as they have all the listed desired properties. Also, many therapeutic moieties can be encapsulated into the hydrogels, so wound healing can be promoted. Thus, these materials have drawn great attention and numerous novel effective hydrogel dressings have been widely developed. In this Review, after introduction about the wounds and wounds dressing properties in general, the most recent progress on hydrogel wound dressings is presented. The types of hydrogel dressings, their synthesis, properties tuning and the characterization with the focus on the evaluation of dressing properties and material effectiveness are discussed. Finally, conclusions about the current standing of hydrogel dressings and future perspectives about their development are outlined.