Abstract

Bandaging is an advantageous wound management strategy, widely used in human medicine but frequently avoided in veterinary settings – especially in farm animal healthcare, where use of conventional bandages is prohibitively labour intensive and the risk of fouling is high.

In this talk, I shall describe our development path towards novel antimicrobial bandages and how we have attempted to redress the limitations of conventional bandages. Through an iterative approach that included synthesis, physicochemical characterisation and in vitro testing we have developed rapid-setting liquid bandages that can be painted, squeezed or sprayed onto lesions to form robust and water-proof barriers that ‘lock in’ antibiotic actives (where applied). These barriers also prevent bacterial ingress and, importantly, their composition prevents bacterial colonisation, solving a key issue with traditional bandages. Upon application, these barriers self-degrade at a tailored rate, making manual removal unnecessary. This combination of features makes these barriers potentially useful for the treatment of Digital Dermatitis in dairy cattle, which we have selected as our first clinical target.

Following very promising results in Digital Dermatitis, we are now trialling these materials as post-surgical liquid bandages for companion animals. Our end goal is to establish if these bandages can contribute to wound management strategies that simultaneously reduce antibiotic usage and rates of re-infection.