Innovation in Laboratory Evaluations of the Performance of Treatment and Prophylactic Dressings Under Clinically-Relevant Usage Conditions

The effectiveness of wound dressing performance in exudate management when applied to treatment, and in redistribution of skin loads when used prophylactically, are commonly and typically gauged in simple, non-realistic laboratory setups, such as where dressing specimens are submersed in vessels containing aqueous solutions to evaluate their absorbency, or by means of interface pressure measurements in the context of pressure ulcer/injury prevention. In the last several years, we have developed a portfolio of clinically-relevant laboratory test configurations for dressings used in treatment and preventative applications. In the context of treatment, we developed laboratory test methods and robotic wound systems for evaluating two key fluid–structure interaction concepts: Sorptivity−the ability of wound dressings to transfer exudate, including viscous fluids, away from the wound-bed by capillary action; and Durability−the capacity of dressings to maintain their structural integrity over time and particularly, at removal events. In the prevention arena, we developed sophisticated, anatomically-accurate computational models of parts of the human body to evaluate the biomechanical protective efficacy of dressings in redistributing and alleviating skin and subdermal tissue loads due to bodyweight or medical device-related forces. This chapter reviews our recent published research concerning the development of these testing methods for wound dressings, focusing on the clinical relevance of the tests as well as on the standardization and automation of the laboratory measurements of dressing performance. The chapter further demonstrates differences across product performance metrics detected by means of the above advanced test methods for products that supposedly belong to the same families, and how these differences relate to the materials, structure and composition of the tested dressings.