HOW A HUMBLE PLASTER COULD CHANGE YOUR LIFE

HOW A HUMBLE PLASTER COULD CHANGE YOUR LIFE

FROM diagnosing tumours to giving life-saving medicines, these first aid essentials have come a long way...

FROM the moment Earle Dickson invented a small, sticky bandage to protect  his accident-prone wife Josephine from minor cuts, plasters have been an essential in every first-aid box.

No one gives sticking plasters much thought but almost 100 years later they have become smarter and are at the cutting edge of medicine.

Here we discover some of the latest breakthroughs.

DIGITAL PLASTERS

These plasters containing tiny heart monitors have been invented by a British company.

They have a zinc oxide battery, a temperature sensor and two electrocardiograms to measure heart and respiratory rate. Eventually they will free patients from machines and wires.

“Just like mobile phones, medical devices are getting smaller,” says Dr Alison Burdett of Toumaz, the technology company in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, which is behind the breakthrough. “Size is everything. Our vision is the relatively inexpensive digital plaster which can be worn for a week by patients recovering in hospital or at home, then thrown away.”

As the plasters become commonplace, it should be possible to allow some patients to leave hospital earlier.

TUMOUR TREATMENT

Skin cancers can now be treated at home by a revolutionary light-emitting sticking plaster. The device, called the Ambulight, is a form of photodynamic therapy (PDT), an established alternative to surgery for some forms of skin cancer that uses laser or other light sources, combined with a light-sensitive cream to destroy cancer cells.

The Ambulight plaster consists of a disc-shaped pod about an inch in diameter that houses red LED lights. The light source is attached to a controller the size of a mobile phone and is switched on for about three hours while the drug works.

Not only does the plaster allow patients to move around freely but it is cheaper than a typical outpatient treatment. PDT treatment is used to treat non-melanoma-type skin cancers which affect around 15 per cent of the UK population.

Ambulight developer James Ferguson, professor of dermatology at Dundee University, hopes the treatment will eventually be offered at GP surgeries.

“Trials have shown it to be up to 90 per cent as effective as hospital treatment and it is a lot more gentle,” he says. “PDT has been available for 20 years but mainly in a hospital setting. Incorporating the treatment into a plaster was the challenge. The device is tiny.”

SMART BANDAGES

Scientists in Cardiff are developing smart bandages and plasters which detect how well a wound is healing.

Fitted with tiny sensors which monitor temperature and chemicals on the surface of the damaged skin, they are capable of providing an early warning if a wound becomes infected.

One of the first signs of infection is a rise in temperature.

A whole range of interactive dressings are also being pioneered, containing special ingredients such as slow-release silver (a natural antiseptic), medical-grade honey or algae derived from seaweed.

DIABETES

A sticking plaster concealing a small insulin pump will make life easier for diabetes patients.

Worn on the surface of the skin, the device is capable of releasing insulin at regular intervals. About 1.4 million people in the UK have diabetes and a quarter of them have the Type 1 form which requires insulin injections two to four times a day. Insulin pumps already exist but they are larger, worn on the belt like a pager and the tubing can prove cumbersome.

The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) has put ￡120,000 into developing the new patch-pump technology, pioneered by Cellnovo, a company based in Swansea.

Julian Shapley, the company’s director of technology, says: “It’s about the size of a matchbox and will release diabetics from the need to use syringes and needles, allowing patients to eat, sleep, work and exercise normally. Most of the space is taken up by the drug itself.”

The device will be launched this summer and should be widely available by the end of the year.

MEDICATION

Sticking plasters are increasingly popular for delivering medication for all sorts of conditions. In one

of the latest developments, Parkinson’s sufferers are receiving doses of a drug called rotigotine which alleviates some symptoms of the neurological disease. Plasters which deliver drugs in this way are known as transdermal patches.

Experts maintain the use of sticking plasters to continuously deliver drugs is preferable to taking pills, because a constant dose is provided. For Parkinson’s disease patients this allows the brain to be constantly stimulated by the drug, helping to stabilise the condition. For most conditions which can be treated using patches a single plaster is used daily, also eliminating the need to remember to take pills three or four times.