Abstract / Summary
Abstract The management of chronic wounds remains a major challenge in healthcare. Chronic wound infections are frequently associated with biofilm formation, which complicates accurate microbiological diagnosis and subsequent treatment. The diagnosis of wound infection relies predominantly on conventional wound swab sampling, a method with limited sensitivity. Consequently, alternative diagnostic approaches are being investigated. Ceramic dressings combined with sonication may represent a promising tool for improving the diagnosis of chronic wound infections. The present study evaluated the diagnostic and therapeutic potential of this approach. A total of 27 patients with 29 chronic wounds were enrolled. Commercially available ceramic dressings were applied to the wounds and subsequently subjected to sonication to recover causative microbial pathogens. Conventional wound swab sampling was performed in parallel for comparison. Wound status was assessed before and after treatment with the ceramic dressings. Ceramic dressings combined with sonication demonstrated significantly greater sensitivity for the detection of microbial pathogens than the conventional swab method (93.6% vs. 47.8%, p < 0.05). In addition, this approach identified significantly more antibiotic-resistant isolates than conventional swab sampling ( p < 0.05). Following treatment guided by microbiological findings obtained from ceramic dressing sonication and targeted antimicrobial therapy, significant improvements were observed across all evaluated clinical parameters of infected wounds. Complete wound healing was achieved in 18 of the 29 wounds (62.1%) in the monitored period. These findings support the incorporation of ceramic dressings combined with sonication into the diagnostic pathway for chronic wound infections and suggest that this approach may also contribute to improved therapeutic outcomes.