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A Battery Powered, Portable, and Self‐Contained Non‐Thermal Helium Plasma Jet Device for Point‐of‐Injury Burn Wound Treatment
Author(s) -
Parkey Jeffrey,
Cross Jenifer,
Hayes Ryan,
Parham Christi,
Staack David,
Sharma Anjal C.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
plasma processes and polymers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.644
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1612-8869
pISSN - 1612-8850
DOI - 10.1002/ppap.201400245
Subject(s) - burn injury , jet (fluid) , battery (electricity) , materials science , burn wound , biomedical engineering , nuclear engineering , wound healing , surgery , medicine , aerospace engineering , physics , engineering , power (physics) , quantum mechanics
Non‐thermal plasmas (NTP) have been shown to be promising for disinfection, blood coagulation, and cutaneous wound healing applications. Unfortunately, most existing NTP technologies rely on bulky and specialized instrumentation which limits their utility for point‐of‐injury wound treatment. Here we discuss the fabrication of an inexpensive, compact, lightweight, battery powered, portable, and self‐contained helium NTP jet device for potential applicability in burn wound treatment directly at the point‐of‐injury or during transport of the burn casualty to a medical facility. Using the NTP jet we demonstrate rapid inactivation of three bacterial species, two of which are implicated in causing burn wound infection. We also demonstrate that application of the NTP jet improves the rate of closure of deep partial thickness thermal burn wounds compared to untreated wounds in vitro (EpiDermFT).