A mini review on smart wound dressings for detection and treatment of bacterial infections

Wound infection i.e., the colonization of wound by pathogenic organisms has become serious health problem. The wound bed provides a suitable environment to the organisms for their nourishment and proliferation at much faster rate. Although a number of methods are being used clinically to detect the wound infection, they are, sometime, not reliable due to the variable presentation profiles. Moreover, they are time consuming and also painful to the patients. Before wound infection becomes severe and spread further deeper in the body, their timely detection is very important in the wound management. In this context, development of theranostic smart wound dressings that allow the simultaneous monitoring and treatment of wound infections in response to wound environment have received great research interest of the scientific community. In this review article, we will review various such smart dressings and their theranostic applications in wound care.