Effect of Alginate Gelatin Hydrogel Composited with Nano-Zinc on Cesarean Section Wound Healing

Abstract

The Surgical procedure of cesarean section (CS) causes a large wound that any delay in its healing could increase the rate of stress, inconvenience, and dissatisfaction among the women who underwent CS procedure about six weeks after childbirth. The present study is trying to evaluate the effect of alginate and gelatin hydrogel composited with nanozinc effective extensibility and compressibility as a wound dressing nursing care after CS. The number of participants was 700 individuals enrolled all who underwent C-sections at Medical College in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University (from September 2017 until September 2020). Patients were divided into two groups of case and control consist of 350 cases. The case group was treated with alginate gelatin hydrogel-nZnO+antibacterial wound dress and the control group was treated with wound healing ordinary creams+antibacterial. Three and four weeks following CS, the healing process of the wound was evaluated using REEDA wound scale. In the current study, there was not any significant difference between the studied case and control group in respect to individual’s demographical characteristics such as economic status, educational level, BMI, and age. (P > 0.05). Also, we observed that patients treated with alginate gelatin hydrogel-nZnO would experience a significantly lower score for redness, ecchymosis, edema, and approximation of CS wound in comparison to the control group (P < 0.05). Also, slope analysis showed that the healing process was significantly quicker in patients treated with alginate gelatin hydrogel-nZnO in comparison to the control group. Finally, it was observed that more than 80% of patients did not represent any major sign of CS after three weeks, however, in the control case this issue was estimated at 50.6%. No allergic reaction has been observed. Our results showed that using alginate gelatin hydrogel-nZnO wound dress could be a novel treatment in a nursing care setting to decrease the CS wound complication and increase the healing process without any allergic reaction.