Design and fabrication of smart functional hydrogel wound dressing for diabetic foot ulcer

Diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) often evolves into chronic wounds that resist healing over an extended period, sometimes necessitating amputation in severe cases. Traditional wound management approaches generally fail to control these chronic sores successfully. Thus, it arouses a huge demand in clinic for a novel wound dressing to treat DFU effectively. Hydrogel as an ideal delivery system exhibits excellent loading capacity and sustainable release behavior. It also boasts tunable physical and chemical properties adaptable to diverse biomedical scenarios, making it a suitable material for fabricating functional wound dressings to treat DFU. The hydrogel dressings are classified into hemostatic, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory, and healing-promoting hydrogel dressings by associating the pathogenesis of DFU in this paper. The design and fabrication strategies for the dressings, as well as their therapeutic effects in treating DFU, are extensively reviewed. Additionally, this paper highlights future perspectives of multifunctional hydrogel dressings in DFU treatment. This review aims to provide valuable references for material scientists to design and develop hydrogel wound dressings with enhanced capabilities for DFU treatment, and to further translate them into the clinic in the future.