Recent Advances of Chitosan and Natural Polymer-based Hydrogels and their Potential Applications in Wound Healing

Wound healing is a complex process which severely impairing the quality of life in patients. Most significantly, non-healing wounds are always alarming for patients. These non-healing wounds have increased the mortality rate in patients, specifically in the case of type 2 diabetes and non-compressible hemorrhages. Therefore, last few years have witnessed enormous research focus on wound healing, using naturally occurring chitosan and other natural polymers-based hydrogel as one of emerging materials for wound dressing. These special hydrogels have numerous numbers of promising biological properties including: biodegradable, biocompatible, non-toxic, antimicrobial, and hemostatic etc. Owing to their highly fascinating biological properties, these hydrogels are extensively utilized in the recent years for wound healing applications in biomedical domain. In this review, we have more precisely highlighted the recent advances of wound healing applications, using specifically chitosan and other natural polymer-based hydrogels. We have also underlined the role of chitosan-based hydrogel in the different phases of wound healing pathways, such as: Coagulation, inflammation, proliferation, and remodeling. In the subsequent part, it covers the potential therapeutic applications of various chitosan and natural polymer-based hydrogels in wound healing applications in great details. Finally, we describe the emerging and future scope of chitosan-based hydrogel in wound healing.