S20: Advanced Wound Dressings vs Biofilms: In-Vitro Performance

Dressings are an important component of wound care providing moisture balance and protection from the environment.  A plethora of advanced wound dressings are available for various clinical indications, including dressings manufactured from cotton, alginate, collagen as well as synthetic polymers such as polyvinyl alcohol, polyurethane, and silicone.  Control of microorganisms within wounds has been long recognized as an important element of wound care and recently numerous antimicrobial wound dressings have been introduced, which contain antimicrobial agents including silver and polyhexamethylene biguanide.  Biofilms consist of attached microbial communities that are tolerant to traditional antimicrobial therapies and have been implicated in a number of persistent infections.  Increasing evidence suggests biofilms are also involved in delayed healing of chronic cutaneous wounds.  We have evaluated commercially available as well as novel wound dressings using in-vitro biofilm models incorporating both single and mixed bacterial species.  While bacteria readily formed biofilms on all dressing materials, commercially available antimicrobial dressings demonstrated a significant reduction in biofilm formation.  The amount of biofilm reduction was dependant on the bacterial species tested.  Novel biofilm-targeted treatments also showed significant reductions as well as synergistic interactions with conventional treatments.  Overall, the design and testing of wound care dressings incorporating the biofilm concept promises to improve the quality of wound care products.