Enhanced Healing of Wounds that Responded Poorly to Silver Dressing by Copper Wound Dressings: Prospective Single Arm Treatment Study
Dr. Oxana Gorel and her colleagues in wound management at the Loewenstein Rehabilitation Center in Ra’anana, Israel embarked on a study to investigate the efficacy of copper dressings in non-infected wounds that were unresponsive to conventional silver-based treatments. Despite the widespread use of silver dressings as the standard of care in their facility, they encountered numerous cases where wounds showed little to no improvement or progressed at a sluggish pace.
The study enrolled 20 patients, ranging from 18 to 85 years old, with non-infected wounds spanning 2 to 30 cm². These patients had been previously treated with silver wound dressings for a duration of 17 to 41 days, failing to achieve a reduction in wound size greater than 50%. Subsequently, they were switched to copper dressings. Among the participants, ten had diabetes, ten had hypertension, and six suffered from Peripheral Vascular Disease, with two patients exhibiting multiple wounds, predominantly located below the knee due to amputation.
Over a period of 25 days, the mean reduction in wound area during treatment with copper dressings was approximately 2.4 times higher compared to silver dressings, with reductions of 87.35% ± 22.4% and 37.02% ± 25.11% respectively (mean ± SD; p < 0.001; paired t-test).
The notable acceleration in wound healing observed with copper dressings is attributed to the essential role copper plays in all phases of physiological skin repair. In contrast, silver lacks a physiological role in the human body and emerging evidence suggests it may even impede wound healing processes. These findings align with previous clinical reports demonstrating the superior wound healing efficacy of copper dressings, applicable to both infected and non-infected wounds.
Published in the peer-reviewed journal Health Science Reports (2024;7:e1816, https://doi.org/10.1002/hsr2.1816), this study provides strong evidence supporting the hypothesis that the application of copper dressings stimulates wound healing processes in non-infected wounds, offering a promising alternative to silver dressings.
