The bandage that can predict the wound
Researchers to begin testing an electrified adhesive film that could prevent bedsores
It may give a whole new meaning to the concept of “ouch-less” bandages.
How about a bandage that can predict wounds before they even occur?
That’s what researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, will soon be testing on human patients with an electrified, adhesive film that can detect bedsores before they actually form — by which time they can be too late to treat.
The thin, transparent device, it is hoped, will alleviate a problem that already poses a large and growing menace to people facing long, bedridden stays in hospital or chroniccare facilities.
In the U.S. it’s estimated that pressure wounds afflict 2.5 million patients a year and cost that healthcare system $11 billion annually — costs that private insurers are often unwilling to cover.
Canadian Institute for Health Information data from 2013 shows the problem is especially bad in complex-care facilities here, where about 14 per cent of patients will develop bedsores.
An aging population and growing incidence of Type 2 diabetes, which restricts circulation, can only make the problem worse if not addressed, says Michel Maharbiz, an electrical engineer at Berkeley and one of the device’s co-creators.
The bandage works by detecting how electrical currents are conducted through the body’s tissues.
Cells naturally contain charged ions such as potassium and chlorine that can conduct electrical currents through the tissues they form. If those currents are made to oscillate rapidly back and forth at different frequencies — thousands to hundreds of thousands of times a second — the cells’ ability to move the electricity through can change.
Cells that are healthy lose this conductive ability at different rates than those that are damaged.
To induce the oscillating current into skin cells prone to bedsore damage, such as those on the back and buttocks, Berkeley researchers have embedded arrays of gold electrodes into thin films that can be placed over vulnerable areas. As small, oscillating currents are introduced through attached wires, the embedded electrodes can detect how fast the cells’ conductive capacities are changing. This information is relayed back to a portable reader.
As part of a normal medical workup, patients facing long hospital or chronic-care stays would have the oscillating current responses of their healthy tissues assessed upon arrival. The electrified bandages can then be applied to different areas periodically to assess changes in their conductive capacities. This could allow physicians to map out areas of skin that are becoming stressed or damaged and could erupt in bedsores.
The bandage might also be used to assess the severity of open wounds and determine treatments.
To test it, researchers pinched mouse skin between a pair of magnets to simulate the bed-againstbone pressures placed on human skin. They were able to show that the array could reliably detect and map damaged tissue before it erupted into open and often irreversible sores.
There may be another benefit to the new treatment. Current bedsore control largely involves turning patients — many of whom are obese — over and over in their beds during long hospital stays. This heavy lifting has caused a slew of strain injuries among nurses and other caregivers.
In detecting pressure wounds as they are forming, the bandage could help reduce the need to shift patients until a forming problem is detected. The device is cheap, portable and can be used by nurses and other caregivers at the bedside, Maharbiz says.
The bandage will be entering human trials soon.