Chitin as wound dressing?

Question

Thius is a study I'm doing now. A kind of wound dressing which is different from usual cotton bandages which is woven.

Answer 1

Chitin is a product obtained from the shells of crustaceans. There is already a medical wound dressing on the market. I used to work for a company that manufactured it, and now I can’t even remember the product name. You can probably find it with a little searching on the web.

The wound dressing was very neat in that it was a non-stick pad saturated with chitosan. They were packaged like tiny alcohol wipes. Anyway you’d put them directly on a bleeding wound, that the wound would clot up really fast.

I always thought alginate (another product from the sea) dressings were cool too. They are similar to gauze. But when you want to remove them you just soak in a tub and they dissolve away. Really good for road rash.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitin