Utilizing tilapia fish skin biomaterial for burn wound dressing: A systematic review.

Burn wound management remains a burden in our hospitals with more than 180,000 people dying annually due to burn-related complications. Bacterial infections further affect the healing duration of the wound hence most treatment modalities have aimed at maintaining aseptic conditions on the wound. Silver sulphadiazine (SSD) cream 1% has demonstrated the ability to bind to bacteria cell walls, its amino acids and DNA, and interferes with its respiratory chain resulting in bacteria death. SSD is considered the gold standard treatment of burn wounds despite its shortfalls in the treatment of burns. As a result, recent studies have focused on finding better burn treatment alternatives. Traditional wound dressings like gauze, lint, bandages, and cotton wool are being replaced by modern wound dressings like hydrogels, alginates, and membranes. Despite that these modern dressings provide a moist environment to necessitate wound healing, they also have disadvantages including limited exudate absorptive capacity and lack of antimicrobial effect. Alternatively, the use of tilapia fish skin biomaterial has gained interest over the past years in the treatment of burn wounds. Its usage has been attributed to its high percent composition of collagen type I and III and its ability to influence cell proliferation, differentiation, migration, and synthesis of other proteins on the wound site. In this review, we focus on the various roles that the tilapia fish skin has played in burn wound treatment applications. We discuss how the tilapia fish skin biomaterial has been tailored to be used in different forms of wound dressings and how its processed products have been utilized in treating burns. In this review, we also make a proposition on how the tilapia fish skin biomaterial can be enhanced to be an effective treatment modality for burn wounds.