Sustainable dressings for wound healing

Abstract The field of chronic wound care has been rapidly evolving. With a market size for care of chronic wounds in billions of USD, this is not an insignificant area to encourage more sustainable practices and processes. The sourcing of starting materials for wound dressings from renewable resources is the first crucial step in ensuring that the environmental impact is minimized. Next important choice is to select methodologies in accordance with the principles of green chemistry. This involves utilizing green solvents as reaction media in the chemical processes for preparing dressing materials. In many cases, like production of hydrogels, chemical crosslinking reagents are often employed. These can be, in general, easily replaced by enzymes like peroxidases, tyrosinases and sortases. Process intensification strategies have emerged as a powerful approach to ensure economy and sustainability in production of materials at large scale. Use of microwave radiations and ultrasonication instead of heat to accelerate reaction rates in production of dressing materials helps in many cases to inject sustainability in care of chronic wounds. This review attempts to highlight the ongoing efforts and future possibilities in the area of the development of cost-effective wound dressings by sustainable methods. Graphical Abstract