A Rapid Self-Pumping Organohydrogel Dressing with Hydrophilic Fractal Microchannels to Promote Burn Wound Healing.

Abstract

Burn wounds pose great challenges for conventional dressings because massive exudates oversecreted from swollen tissues and blisters seriously delay wound healing. Herein, a self-pumping organohydrogel dressing with hydrophilic fractal microchannels is reported that can rapidly drain excessive exudates with ≈30 times enhancement in efficiency compared with the pure hydrogel, and effectively promote burn wound healing. A creaming-assistant emulsion interfacial polymerization approach is proposed to create the hydrophilic fractal hydrogel microchannels in the self-pumping organohydrogel through a dynamic floating-colliding-coalescing process of organogel precursor droplets. In a murine burn wound model, the rapid self-pumping organohydrogel dressings can markedly reduce dermal cavity by ≈42.5%, accelerate blood vessel regeneration by ≈6.6 times, and hair follicle regeneration by ≈13.5 times, compared with the commercial dressing (Tegaderm). This study paves an avenue for designing high-performance functional burn wound dressings.