Antimicrobial silver sulphate loaded foam product safety testing problem

提供抗菌性能的先进敷料产品可以提高治愈率，减轻痛苦，并降低持续的医疗成本。有些伤口在临床上更为严重（急性），如大面积烧伤/烫伤或患者抗感染能力较弱的重大伤口。在这种情况下，伤口感染的高风险意味着生命危险，因此需要使用具有强大抗菌性能的优质敷料产品。这类产品的费用较高（制造成本和最终用户成本），但在高风险情况下使用它们是合理的，可以降低死亡率。市场需要一种成本更适中的抗菌伤口敷料产品，用于亚急性但难以愈合的伤口，在这种情况下，慢性感染导致长期伤口护理的风险很大。具体来说，采用银基抗菌作用的聚氨酯泡沫产品具有市场吸引力。改进的伤口敷料产品与这项工作有关，旨在通过提供我们现有的聚氨酯泡沫基产品系列的生产线开发，直接解决这一市场需求。抗菌产品的创新性质必须在其与活组织的相容性和整体安全性方面得到很好的理解。充分了解这些特性需要对产品的物理和化学性质进行分析，这可能是预期的用途。获得这些信息所需的科学分析方法还没有现成的，A4I的资金将使我们能够确定并获得英国国家测量系统中提供的最合适的尖端分析专业知识和方法。

Advanced dressing products providing antimicrobial properties can improve healing rates, alleviating suffering, and ongoing healthcare costs. Some wounds represent more clinically severe (acute) situations such as large area burns/scalds or significant wounds on patients less able to fight off infections. In such situations, high risk of wound infection represents risk to life, necessitating the use of premium dressing products with powerful antimicrobial properties. Such products carry higher expense (both manufacture and end-user costs), but their use is justifiable to reduce mortality rates in high-risk situations.There is market demand for a more moderate-cost antimicrobial wound dressing product, intended for use in sub-acute, but hard to heal wounds, where the risk of chronic infection leading to longer term wound care is significant. Specifically, there is market-pull for a polyurethane foam product employing a silver-based antimicrobial action. The improved wound dressing product that this work relates to, is designed to directly address this market need by providing a line-development of our existing polyurethane foam-based product family.The innovative nature of the antimicrobial product must be well understood in terms of its compatibility with living tissue and its overall safety. Full understanding of these characteristics requires analysis of the physical and chemical nature of the product as may be expected from intended use. The scientific analytical methods required to obtain this information are not available off-the-shelf and A4I funding will allow us to identify and access the most appropriate cutting-edge analytical expertise and methods provided within the UK national measurement system.