Paper PB+BI+PS-TuM6
Plasma Medicine - From Bench to Bedside

Tuesday, October 31, 2017, 9:40 am, Room 12

During the last decade it became possible to stimulate eukaryotic cells by applying non-thermal plasma. The same plasmas can be used to kill micororgansisms - both in vitro and in vivo. However, there is the need to understand the processes of how electrical fields, ROS /RNS and UV generation influence the cellular activities in order to find the balance between stimulating or killing biological matter. Therefore, much effort had been done by in order to control the plasma components and finally modulate biological activities. It was shown before that argon plasma treatment leads in a time dependent manner to an activation of cell proliferation in human skin samples. Furthermore, it is known that non-thermal plasma is able to diminish bacterial load of cultured microorganisms in vitro independent of the strain. Even more, plasma reduces the amount of antibiotic resistant bacteria in the same manner as their non-resistant strains.

In 2013, new developed plasma sources were certified as medical products and since than those devises are in clinical application. Here we report on our findings on plasma treated chronic wounds and the efficacy of non-thermal plasma. There is a very promising rate of healed and improved wounds, which demonstrate that plasma indeed can help patients with chronic wounds. However, there are some discrepancies between in vitro findings and results from patient treatment. The bacterial reduction is lower than in in vitro studies, but skin regeneration seems not to be dependent on complete bacterial removal. On the other hand, patient treatment reveals new facts about the positive effects of plasma treatment of persisting wounds. Here we summarize the positive results of plasma mediated stimulation of patients with chronic wounds.