British journal of nursing (Mark Allen Publishing)
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Silver (Ag) has been thought to improve wound healing and reduce instances of associated infections for many years. There are centuries-old records of silver being used in wound treatment, but the past two decades in particular have seen an increasing clinical application of silver-impregnated wound dressings and as such, have seen the number of research articles similarly increase. ⋯ The author also attempts to critically appraise the opposing literature related to the clinical relevance of microbial kill-time and the volume of silver contained in dressings, while investigating the efficacy of silver-impregnated dressings in the management of burns and chronic wounds. In order to collect literature relevant to this review, the author searched CINAHL, Medline, BMJ, Medscape, Journal of Advanced Nursing, the Electronic Medicines Compendium (EMC), and the Cochrane Library, using the terms silver, silver sulfadiazine, impregnated, wound, burn, dressing, review, quantative, efficacy, in vitro, in vivo, nanocrystalline, toxicity, infection, microbial kill-time, and comparison.