Hi!
I need guidance regarding the thickness of wound dressing hydrogels that is more flexible and skin friendly. I have synthesized the hydrogel and its thickness is approx. 160 um. But its less flexible and caused irritation to mouse skin. Does decreasing thickness of wound dressing would help in generating a positive response? Material I am using is PVA.
Hi there,
the first question that comes into my mind reading your question as a biocompatibility specialist is, if you are sure/made sure that the parameter causing irritation is the material thickness or if there are leachable substances that could cause skin irritation?
If you did not yet investigate this path, I would recommend using a skin irritation test as they are, for instance, described in ISO Standard 10993-23. Those kind of tests use extracts form your medical device (or here more correct material) and test their irritating potential.
I hope this helps.
Kerstin Frey I discussed it with different researchers and they asked me to change thickness and make it more flexible. In literature PVA is reported biocompatible material in in vivo studies. But when I used it in in vivo studies it exhibited redness around the wound area and histology studies showed more adipocytes rather than fibroblasts and blood vessels.
The thing with biocompatibility is that the bulk material can be biocopatible but there can still be impurities in the material (e.g. monomers, solvent residues or other impurities from auxillaries) that can cause the specific batch of the material to elict certain bioincompatibility reactions.
That's why there are polymers batches on the market that are specialy marketed for medical applications and others only for technical/ industrial applications.
Since I do not specifically know the background of your project I thought this input might be helpful.
I am not an expert in wound dressing medical devices, so I can only giblve some input on the general biocompatibility topic.
Good luck!
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