Cold air plasma of streamer corona discharge for decontamination and wound healing
Truchlá D., Krčma F., Machala Z.,
1st Training School on Fundamental Aspects on Plasma Medicine, Caparica (Portugal), February 14-16, p. 36 (2022)
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Abstract: Non-thermal plasma brings several new ways for use in modern medicine. It contains many active agents, such as electrons and ions, UV light, electric field, radicals, excited atoms, and molecules. Such complicated chemistry leads to numerous synergistic interactions between cold plasma and biological systems, including cells and tissues [1].
The healing process in tissues is a complex cascade of cellular events that leads to the reconstruction and remodeling of the injured tissue and the removal of fragments from the broken cellular and protein matrix of the tissue. The complexity of wound healing increases when the wound is contaminated by bacteria. Infection caused by presence of bacteria can delay the process of healing [2, 3]. Excitation and dissociation of atoms and molecules from air in plasma generate reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS), such as hydroxyl radicals, nitric oxide radicals, excited nitrogen molecules, atomic nitrogen, argon and oxygen. These species are probably responsible for many beneficial effects in plasma therapies [1, 3].
Improving wound healing is one of several promising applications of non-thermal plasma. The potential of using cold plasma as an instrument for wound healing is primarily based on the fact, that plasma can inactivate different types of microorganisms, which play the main role in a bacterial infection and lead to poorly healing chronic wounds [3]. Furthermore, plasma has the ability to penetrate non-homogeneous and cracked surfaces better than liquid medicaments. Other pros of the plasma wound healing is a potential stimulation of angiogenesis and tissue recovery process.
The aim of the study is to investigate the antimicrobial effect of streamer corona discharge directly applied to agar plates inoculated with bacteria Escherichia coli as simple surface wound models, depending on the different exposure time of plasma treatment and different age of microbial population. We observed the importance of an early treatment for better wound disinfection.
Porcine skin was used as a more relevant model for non-homogenous wound surface due to the similarity of human skin with porcine skin in the second part of the study. The same streamer corona discharge directly applied to porcine skin inoculated with E.coli.[4].
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