Cold plasma treatment

Hard-to-heal wounds that fail to close pose a large healthcare problem. In Europe and the US, approximately 1–2% of the population will develop one or more slow-healing or non-healing wounds during their lifetime.¹ The most common hard-to-heal wounds are diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs), venous leg ulcers (VLUs) and pressure ulcers (PUs). Although the origin of these wounds is different, the reason why they show impaired healing is generic: local tissue hypoxia, bacterial colonisation of the wound and/or impaired blood flow.² Even with wound care provided by specialised wound care providers, 20–40% of wounds fail to close,³ indicating an unmet need for an effective treatment of slow- and non-healing wounds.

Plasma, the so-called fourth state of matter, is ionised gas created by adding energy to a gas. Plasma is a mix of electrons and ions, reactive species, UV radiation, visible light, electromagnetic fields and warmth. Plasma generation at low temperature under atmospheric conditions is referred to as cold plasma or cold atmospheric plasma (CAP), which is suitable for therapeutic applications. CAP has a positive impact on wound healing by stimulation of cell migration and cell proliferation, improvement of microcirculation and inactivation of a broad spectrum of microorganisms, even if antibiotic resistant or in biofilm.⁴