Composite hydrogel based oxidated sodium carboxymethyl cellulose and gelatin loaded carboxymethylated cotton fabric for hemostasis and infected wound treatment

The fabric-based wound dressings are hard to maintain a moist environment for wound healing while the hemostatic property and gas permeability of some hydrogel-based wound dressings are not ideal. This study first put forward a strategy of checkerboard-pattern wound dressing: 1) preparing the base fabric with hemostatic property, 2) printing multifunctional hydrogels onto one side of the base fabric to form checkerboard patterns, 3) modifying the other side of the base fabric to be hydrophobic. In this manner, the composite dressing not only maintained the advantages of hydrogels, but also inherited good mechanical property, hemostatic property, and gas permeability from the base fabric. Here, the cotton fabric was carboxymethylated to be MCF. To obtain multifunctional hydrogel, sodium carboxymethylcellulose was oxidated to introduce aldehyde groups to form Schiff base with amino groups in gelatin, besides, dopamine and Ag nanoparticles were introduced to endow the hydrogel with antioxidant property and antibacterial activity. The multifunctional hydrogel was printed onto one side of MCF, subsequently, the deposition of paraffin made the other side of this dressing become hydrophobic. The good performance of the obtained dressing in hemostatic process and wound healing demonstrated its potential in the field of wound treatment.