Gas Plasma: Medical Uses and Developments in Wound Care

Abstract

Non‐thermal gas plasmas (NTGPs) are a promising emergent medical technology.a Unlike thermal plasmas, they generate a complex room temperature mix of reactive species which interact with tissues. The characterization of candidate plasmas and their interaction with tissues has shown that they produce a variety of broadly dose dependent effects ranging from fibroblast proliferation to angiogenesis and bacterial destruction. These findings, supported by recent experiments using skin models, suggest that NTGP's could potentially play an important role in both decontaminating acute and chronic wounds and accelerating healing. However, important issues over toxicological and environmental safety remain unanswered and a number of regulatory and technical hurdles will need to be overcome before a NTGP medical device is released.

Low temperature atmospheric pressure plasma sources for microbial decontamination

“…Hence, they are widely used in a broad spectrum of applications ranging from low temperature plasma chemistry, decomposition of gaseous pollutants, light sources, surface modification to medical sterilization and microbial decontamination (Kogelschatz, 2004;Becker et al, 2005;Foest et al, 2005;Ehlbeck et al, 2008). But also emerging application areas like plasma healthcare can be approachable by the usage of non-LTE plasmas (Stoffels, 2007;Kong et al, 2009;Lloyd et al, 2010;Laroussi, 2009;Fridman et al, 2008). Thus, plasma treatment of cancer cells (Kim, Kim, Park, Jeon, Seo, Iza and Lee, 2009;Vandamme et al, 2010;Zhang et al, 2008), living human cells (Tümmel et al, 2007;Stoffels et al, 2008;Yonson et al, 2006), prevention of nosocomial infections and the therapy of infected wounds (Fridman et al, 2008;Isbary et al, 2010) as a few examples are in the ongoing research focus.…”

Jet‐to‐jet interactions in atmospheric‐pressure plasma jet arrays for surface processing

“…Therefore, APPJ is suitable for potential applications in materials processing, plasma biomedicine, surface decontamination, and thin film deposition. [5][6][7][8][9] However, the treatment area of a typical single plasma jet is less than 1 cm 2 due to the confinement of the structure of the plasma jet devices. This is one important factor to limit the applications of APPJ.…”

Cold plasma on full-thickness cutaneous wound accelerates healing through promoting inflammation, re-epithelialization and wound contraction

“…The utilization of various exogenous agents from natural products like Indonesian honey 2 and oleic or linoleic acid 3 to physical tools like light 4 and laser 5 hasbeen shown to enhance the overlapping healing phases, including inflammation, proliferation and remodeling 1 . Among these, wound therapy based on cold plasma, that is, nonequilibrium plasma (with an electron temperature much higher than the gas temperature), with a low temperature of ionized gas 6 , has opened the possibility of a paradigm shift in biomedical therapy 7 ;it has drawn substantial attention from both plasma and wound care scientists since its feasibility to work through living tissue 8,9 and its potency for resolving problems in contemporary wound care were demonstrated 10 . As the fourth state of matter 6 , plasma has the ability to produce controllable reactive species, like nitric oxide (NO) and hydroxyl radicals (OH), upon contacting the open air 11 , as well as OH radicals and hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) upon contacting an aqueous solution 12 .…”