Nanocrystalline silver dressings significantly influence bioimpedance spectroscopy measurements of fluid volumes in burns patients.

Bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS) is a tool utilized in health care to investigate body composition and fluid distribution. Limited research has addressed the clinical use of BIS in burns. This study aimed to examine the effects of silver dressings on BIS measurements in burns patients. BIS measurements were collected during two dressing conditions: no dressing (ND), and; Acticoat™ dressing (AD). Wilcoxon sign-ranks tests determined if there were any significant differences in BIS measures between the dressing conditions. Multilevel mixed-effects linear regressions examined the effect of %TBSA and body mass on BIS variables across the dressing conditions. The mean age of the patients (n=31) was 34.90 years; with a median TBSA of 15%. There was a significant increase in extracellular fluid (ECF) (p<0.001), intracellular fluid (ICF) (p<0.001) and total body water (TBW) (p<0.001) when AD was in place. There were significant interactions between dressing condition, %TBSA and body mass, whereby the difference in ECF, ICF and TBW between the ND and AD conditions were increased as %TBSA and body mass increased. Algorithms were developed subsequently to adjust BIS outputs for use when AD is in place. Clinician's may continue to use BIS in real-time using the predictive algorithms established during this study.