The bandages use pulses from the body and could only take days instead of weeks to heal wounds Electrical bandages could help to speed up the timeline for recovery. (Image Credit: Sam Million-Weaver/University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Newly developed self-powered electrical bandages designed by researchers from the US and China promise to be just as easy to wear as dressings. These new dressings have tiny electrodes powered by nanogenerators wrapped around the torso. The only thing you would need to do is breathe. The movement of your rib-cage starts up the nanogenerators and sends low-pulses to the wound, promoting it to heal effectively.
The healing process involving the electrical bandages using pulses isn't very clear. However, they help by increasing the viability of fibroblasts, encouraging them to line up easily. The pulses also create more biochemical materials that help with tissue growth.
The test results with the electrical bandages were astounding. Wounds on rodents that took nearly two weeks to heal with normal dressings were sped up with the electrical bandage ─ only took three days. The new technology uses common materials and is quite easy to create. Which means it's not as expensive as one would think - it would be expected to cost around the same price, if not a bit more than normal bandages. The team who developed the electrical bandage still wants to test it on pig skin as it's very similar to human skin, and after that, human trials. Additionally, they are tweaking the structures of the nanogenerators to allow I to gather energy from small twitches in the skin or the pulse of a heartbeat. If tests go well, you could find yourself spending less time healing and less time in the hospital.
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