Topical oxygen therapy & micro/nanobubbles: a new modality for tissue oxygen delivery

Abstract

Up to 15 billion dollars of US health care expenditure each year is consumed by treatment of poorly healing wounds whose etiologies are often associated with aberrancies in tissue oxygenation. To address this issue, several modes of tissue oxygen delivery systems exist, including Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) and Topical Oxygen Therapy (TOT), but their efficacies have yet to be fully substantiated. Micro/nanobubbles (MNBs), which range anywhere from 100 μm to <1 μm in diameter and are relatively stable for hours, offer a new mode of oxygen delivery to wounds. The aim of this article is to systematically review literature examining the use of TOT for wound healing and use of MNBs for tissue oxygenation using the MEDLINE database. The search yielded 87 articles (12 MNB articles and 75 TOT articles), of which 52 met the inclusion criteria for this literature review (12 MNB articles and 40 TOT articles). Additionally, we present an analysis on the efficacy of our MNB generating technology and propose its use as a wound healing agent.

Keywords: micro/nanobubbles; nanobubbles; tissue oxygenation; topical oxygen therapy; wound healing.

© 2018 Medicalhelplines.com Inc and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Figures

Figure 1

TOT flow diagram: 653 articles were obtained from search terms. After reviewing all 653 abstracts, only 75 articles met the inclusion criteria for complete full‐text assessment. After full‐text assessment, only 40 articles were found to utilise a mode of TOT and were thus incorporated in the review

Figure 2

MNB flow diagram: 423 articles were obtained from search terms. After reviewing all 423 abstracts, only 12 articles met the inclusion criteria for complete full‐text assessment. These 12 articles were incorporated in the systematic review

Figure 3

pO2 measurements of micro/nanobubbles (blue) with oxygen‐impregnated core made in water compared with control (orange) composed of dissolved oxygen gas in water. pO2 measured in solution using (ABL800 FLEX Radiometer Medical ApS, Copenhagen, Denmark)