Hydrogels in wound care

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Hydrogel wound dressings aid in the healing process by providing a moist environment and non-adherent pain relief. Discover how hydrogel dressing wound care changes the game for a wide range of acute and chronic wounds, including infected wounds. Its composition of 90% water in a cool, soothing gel effectively regulates fluid exchange.

What Are Hydrogels?

A hydrogel is a natural or synthetic polymer material that can absorb and retain a large amount of liquid. Natural hydrogels, like collagen and alginate, exhibit great variation and are often combined with synthetic hydrogels to create composite polymers that manifest greater stability. Because of their responsive and programmable qualities, hydrogels are widely used in robotics, chemical detectors and biomedical applications. These polymers can take the form of amorphous gels or be impregnated into medical pads or wound fillers.

Hydrogels for Wound Healing

The process of wound healing requires a clean, moist environment and time. If you’re stumped looking for reasons a chronic wound won’t heal, the type of dressing applied may well be the culprit. Traditional wound care, like gauze, pulls moisture from the wound bed and can adhere to the wound, causing undue pain during dressing changes. Hydrogel wound care, on the other hand, donates moisture to the wound, creating a moist environment that promotes autolytic debridement, granulation and epithelialization. Non-adherent hydrogel wound dressings are indicated for:

  • Dry or slightly moist partial- and full-thickness wounds
  • Abrasions and partial-thickness burns
  • Granulating wounds
  • Skin damage from radiation
  • Wounds with slough or eschar

Do not choose hydrogel for wounds with very high exudate or for full-thickness burns.

How to Choose a Hydrogel Wound Dressing

When it comes to choosing a hydrogel dressing, wound care best practices are an appropriate guide. Select a hydrogel wound dressing that will accommodate the specific character and severity of your patient’s wound while keeping a few cautions in mind:

  • All hydrogel wound dressings require a secondary dressing.
  • Do not use hydrogel wound care in conjunction with foams, gelling fiber dressings or additional, non-impregnated alginates.

Take care to avoid maceration on periwound tissue and use a plain saline solution to clean the wound between dressing changes. To help reduce the pain of radiation burns, chill hydrogel wound dressing pads in the refrigerator and apply them cold for a soothing experience.

Hydrogel Wound Gels, Pads and Fillers

In addition to hydrogel pads, many trusted brands of hydrogel wound gels and hydrogel fillers are available to patients and caregivers. Triad, SilvaSorb and Anasept are popular options for antimicrobial hydrogel wound care, while MANUKApli Sterile Honey Wound Dressing harnesses the purest medical-grade Manuka honey to act as a 100% natural, antibiotic-free hydrogel for wound healing. Regenecare HA is a hydrogel wound gel that delivers 2% lidocaine to reduce pain and inflammation immediately, in addition to aloe vera and marine collagen to rebuild the skin matrix and restore an effective moisture barrier.

Resources:

https://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=58702.php

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbioe.2021.718377/full

https://blog.wcei.net/wound-care-dressings-hydrogels

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Comments

  1. Target is in trouble. And while it’s easy to get lost in the company’s recent (poor) handling of American culture war narratives that cast it as too “woke” or too willing to cave to online fascists, the root of Target’s problems runs deep.
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    Don’t get me wrong – the massive consumer boycotts from Black organizers have done damage. And there are probably folks on the far right who think even Target’s toned-down, overwhelmingly beige Pride merch this year was still too loud.
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    But its stock is in the gutter and sales have been falling for two years because of good ol’ business fundamentals. It overstocked. It lost the pulse of its customers. It went up against Amazon Prime with… actually, does anyone know what Target’s Amazon Prime competitor is called?
    The brand we petite bourgeoisie once playfully referred to as Tar-zhay has lost its spark. The company reported a decline in sales for a third-straight quarter, part of a broader trend of falling or flat sales for two years. Employees have lost confidence in the company’s direction. And 2025 has been a particularly rough financially, as Black shoppers organized a boycott over Target’s decision to cave to right-wing pressure on diverse hiring goals.
    Shares were down 10% Wednesday.

    It’s not to say the new guy, Michael Fiddelke, is unqualified. He’s been at Target since he started as an intern more than 20 years ago, after all. But Wall Street is clearly concerned that Target’s leadership is underestimating the severity of the need for a significant change— just as President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported goods threaten the entire retail industry.

    Appointing a company lifer “does not necessarily remedy the problems of entrenched groupthink and the inward-looking mindset that have plagued Target for years,” Neil Saunders, an analyst at GlobalData Retail, said in a note to clients Wednesday.

    Missing the mark
    In its 2010s heyday, Target became a go-to for consumers who liked a bargain but didn’t necessarily like bargain-hunting. The shelves felt well-curated. You’d go to Target because it had one thing you needed and 12 things you didn’t know you needed. It was stocked with Millennial cringe long before Gen Z gave us the term Millennial cringe.

    Target’s sales held strong through the pandemic as remote workers set up home offices and stocked up on essentials. Months of lockdown also benefited the store as people began refreshing their spaces because they didn’t really have much else to do and they were staring at the same walls all the time.

  2. Dr. Jake Scott is on the front line of his second pandemic in five years and he is not getting much sleep.

    Scott works full-time as an infectious disease physician at Stanford Health Care’s Tri-Valley hospital in Pleasanton, California. When he is done taking care of his patients and his two grade-school aged kids, he often stays up past midnight writing — furiously penning op-eds, collecting studies, leading evidence reviews and posting meaty threads on social media, most of them correcting the record on vaccines.
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    Often, he’s reacting to the latest maneuvers by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. A pinned post responding to one of Kennedy’s appearances on Fox News has been viewed almost 5 million times. Another post fact-checking Kennedy’s claims about potential harms from aluminum in vaccines had 1 million views in its first 48 hours. Scott’s followers on X have doubled since April.
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    “A million views for this long-winded, very detailed, kind of nerdy breakdown of the science,” Scott said, marveling at the attention it got. “I think that’s saying something, you know? People want that information, and they deserve it,” said Scott who is 48.

    The Covid-19 pandemic turned many infectious disease specialists and virologists into household names. Scott’s was not one of them, perhaps because he was too busy treating patients. He didn’t stay out of the public discourse completely, however. He was one of the first doctors to tell people that Omicron didn’t seem to be as severe an infection as earlier strains of the virus, although some virologists were skeptical at the time.

    In President Donald Trump’s second administration, however, Scott is taking on what he sees as a second pandemic — misinformation and disinformation about vaccines. He knows false information can be as harmful as any virus.
    “When officials spread inaccurate information about vaccines, it does have real consequences, and families make decisions based on fear rather than on facts,” Scott said.

    It’s already happening. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported data showing kindergarten vaccination rates continue to decline, as states make it easier to opt out of school vaccination requirements. Vaccine preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough are rising again, too.

    Scott knows it could get much worse.

    “In 2021, nearly every single patient I lost to Covid was unvaccinated by choice, and every colleague of mine has said the same thing.”

  4. Cracker Barrel’s modern makeover doesn’t stop with redoing its restaurants. It’s dropping the barrel and the man from its logo, too.

    On Tuesday, the Southern-inspired casual dining chain unveiled a new logo “rooted even more closely to the iconic barrel shape,” but without the barrel itself — a central part of the brand’s identity since 1977. (As for the the barrel itself, it was “essentially the water coolers of the day,” Cracker Barrel explained in a blog post.)
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    The identity refresh also includes new TV commercials, a redesigned menu and several new fall-themed foods, part of a larger $700 million transformation plan to shake off its stodgy image and lure in new diners.

    “The way we communicate, the things on the menu, the way the stores look and feel … all of these things came up time and time again in our research as opportunities for us to really regain relevancy,” said CEO Julie Felss Masino in 2024.
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    In particular, the new logo is the latest in a string of changes angering some of its loyal fans who fear the 56-year-old chain is drifting too far from its bucolic roots. On social media, some users griped, with one writing that the “changing the logo just feels like another little piece of culture dying off.” The change also angered some conservatives, too, like President Donald Trump’s son.

    Cracker Barrel has also been remodeling some of its 660-plus restaurants. The chain has “decluttered” the interiors by removing the country-themed trinkets that lined the walls and lightened up the interiors, shifting away from the dark woods. So far, reaction has been mixed on social media, with some videos on TikTok going viral voicing their displeasure.

    Masino remains adamant that the renovations are working, telling ABC News this week that “people like what we’re doing” and that feedback has been “overwhelmingly positive.”

    In June, Cracker Barrel posted an unusual earnings report for a restaurant: It’s taking a $5 million hit from tariffs because of its retail shops, which largely has products imported from overseas. Restaurant revenue and same-store sales both slightly grew, mirroring other increases casual dining chains are experiencing.

  5. Cracker Barrel’s modern makeover doesn’t stop with redoing its restaurants. It’s dropping the barrel and the man from its logo, too.

    On Tuesday, the Southern-inspired casual dining chain unveiled a new logo “rooted even more closely to the iconic barrel shape,” but without the barrel itself — a central part of the brand’s identity since 1977. (As for the the barrel itself, it was “essentially the water coolers of the day,” Cracker Barrel explained in a blog post.)
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    The identity refresh also includes new TV commercials, a redesigned menu and several new fall-themed foods, part of a larger $700 million transformation plan to shake off its stodgy image and lure in new diners.

    “The way we communicate, the things on the menu, the way the stores look and feel … all of these things came up time and time again in our research as opportunities for us to really regain relevancy,” said CEO Julie Felss Masino in 2024.
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    In particular, the new logo is the latest in a string of changes angering some of its loyal fans who fear the 56-year-old chain is drifting too far from its bucolic roots. On social media, some users griped, with one writing that the “changing the logo just feels like another little piece of culture dying off.” The change also angered some conservatives, too, like President Donald Trump’s son.

    Cracker Barrel has also been remodeling some of its 660-plus restaurants. The chain has “decluttered” the interiors by removing the country-themed trinkets that lined the walls and lightened up the interiors, shifting away from the dark woods. So far, reaction has been mixed on social media, with some videos on TikTok going viral voicing their displeasure.

    Masino remains adamant that the renovations are working, telling ABC News this week that “people like what we’re doing” and that feedback has been “overwhelmingly positive.”

    In June, Cracker Barrel posted an unusual earnings report for a restaurant: It’s taking a $5 million hit from tariffs because of its retail shops, which largely has products imported from overseas. Restaurant revenue and same-store sales both slightly grew, mirroring other increases casual dining chains are experiencing.

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