Smart wound dressing for advanced wound management: Real-time monitoring and on-demand treatment

Timely and accurate assessment of wounds during the wound healing process is key for correct diagnosis and treatment decisions for wound repair. However, traditional wound management strategies often fail to provide timely and accurate information on wound status, thereby delaying or misleading treatments. Smart wound dressings that enable the in situ real-time monitoring of wound-related biomarkers, early diagnosis and on-demand treatment of adverse wound healing events, such as bacterial infection and inflammation, by integrating wearable sensors, advanced drug delivery systems and wireless communication technology have recently been developed and could improve wound management. In this review, we provided an overview of biomarkers, including temperature, pH, uric acid, glucose, reactive oxygen (ROS), oxygen and enzymes, related to adverse wound healing events and exiting sensors for detecting these biomarkers based on colorimetric, fluorimetric and electrochemical approaches. Examples of smart wound dressings that integrate controllable drug delivery functions triggered by both endogenous and exogenous stimuli, the all-in-one wound dressing systems capable of real-time monitoring and on-demand treatment, and the major challenges and exciting opportunities of such smart wound dressings in wound management are presented and comprehensively discussed.