Recent Progress of Highly Adhesive Hydrogels as Wound Dressings

Wound dressings are widely used to promote wound healing. Traditional dressings need the help of tape to fix onto the wounds, which are not suitable in the human body. In addition, hemostasis of internal wounds is usually treated with direct sutures which will cause secondary trauma to the patient and increase the risk of infection. Therefore, development of new dressings with high tissue adhesion and biocompatibility is of great clinical significance. The highly adhesive wound dressings can firmly attach to external and internal wounds, and form a barrier to prevent bacterial invasion, accelerate healing, and avoid secondary damage caused by sutures. Hydrogels are soft materials that possess a 3D network structure with tunable physical and chemical properties, which provides ideal conditions to support the wound healing process. In this review, we summarize the recent advances in developing hydrogel-based wound dressings as well as their adhesion mechanism. Moreover, the prospects of these wound dressings over the coming years are also covered.