Plasma Devices Kill Drug-Resistant Bacteria, Even in Chronic Wounds

By Clay Dillow Posted 12.01.2009 at 12:45 pm 3 Comments

Bacteria Once drug-resistant bacteria infect a wound, it's extremely difficult to get it out. New plasma devices are changing that.

Plasma plays quite a large role in the universe, making up the high-energy centers of stars like our sun. But researchers are finding that plasma can carry out very small tasks just as well, like killing MSRA and other drug-resistant bacteria both on the skin’s surface and in chronic, non-healing wounds.

Two new devices under development have the capacity to kill bacteria both in clinical settings where one might pick up an infection as well as in wounds already populated by stubborn bacteria colonies. One of the devices is safe for human skin, more effective than the usual method of disinfecting (good old fashioned hand-washing for 3-5 minutes, repeatedly) and could save medical workers hours of time in scrubbing each day. The other, the “argon plasma torch” as it’s currently known, delivers a deadly dose of bactericidal cocktail to offending cells while supporting healthy cellular regeneration in chronic wounds.

Naturally, it would not be advisable to apply the kind of high-energy, high-temperature plasma found on the sun to the skin, much less an open wound. But researchers have made great strides with low-energy plasma devices in recent years; by ionizing fewer of the molecules in plasma, they can make stable plasma whose heat, once distributed to neutral, non-ionized molecules, is very safe to handle – think of it as dropping a drop of really hot water into a bucket of water at room temperature.

Plasma is extremely efficient at killing bacteria because of the chemical reactions it induces naturally, like the generation of free radicals and UV energy. The advent of these two new devices could drastically decrease the number of infections picked up in hospital settings – infections that claim the lives of 37,000 annually – while destroying those that are.

[Hospital Healthcare]

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3 Comments

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chieffranky

12/01/09 at 2:38 pm

As much as I love advances in medical technology, I can't help but wonder when we will be forced to implement (in America) a 1-2 children per household rule. Also, how they would accommodate the peeved various religious communities.

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alouisos

12/01/09 at 6:52 pm

As a resident in Vascular Surgery I have seen many wounds that would not heal. One of the reasons of non healing is bacterial infection. These wounds would not heal even if the patient is perfectly healthy.

This argon plasma torch when it comes to clinical practice and if it is as effective as described in the papers, it will advance healthcare in wounded patients very much.

This research of new methods of killing bacteria has become very up to date lately because antibiotics are effective for a small time window and bacteria quickly create colonies that are resistent.

I wonder if bacteria will have time to produce "plasma resistive colonies". Is this possible?

I do not think so because the mechanism of plasma killing of microbes is the creation of defects in their membranes, proteins, DNA etc causing disfunction to the overall molecular machinery. This is also the effect although minimized, on human cells but they react with collagenogenesis which is promoting healing of the wound.

What it may be needed is different plasma energy options for different bacteria. This should be the phase now for the company that licensed this type of technology.

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DCP

12/15/11 at 5:08 pm

Star Trek got there first. Any "Trekkers" among you remember the "Dermal Regenerator" which used an energy beam to clean, then heal wounds.

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