ADVANCED HYDROGEL DRESSINGS FOR IMPROVED WOUND HEALING: AN IN-DEPTH REVIEW

The management of skin wounds, especially chronic wounds that fail to heal effectively, remains a significant challenge in modern healthcare. Traditional wound dressings offer limited therapeutic benefits, primarily serving as passive barriers. This limitation has spurred the evolution of wound care towards advanced, active dressings designed to create an optimal healing microenvironment and participate directly in the regenerative process. Among these, hydrogels have emerged as a superior platform due to their unique physicochemical properties, including high water content, structural similarity to the native extracellular matrix (ECM), and their capacity to be loaded with therapeutic agents. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the wound healing cascade, detailing the fundamental biology of its four phases: hemostasis, inflammation, proliferation, and remodelling. It explores the pathophysiology of impaired healing and the subsequent evolution of wound dressings from passive coverings to active therapeutic systems. The primary focus is on hydrogels, detailing the roles of both natural and synthetic polymers, with a special emphasis on chitosan for its inherent biocompatibility, biodegradability, and bioactivity. Furthermore, the review discusses the rationale and strategies for creating multifunctional dressings by incorporating bioactive agents like antimicrobials, anti-inflammatories, and antioxidants to target key pathological barriers simultaneously. The development of "smart" systems, such as injectable, self-healing, and stimuli-responsive hydrogels, is also examined as a frontier in the field. Ultimately, this review synthesizes current knowledge to highlight that multifunctional hydrogels represent a highly promising and dynamic area of research poised to revolutionize advanced wound care.