Medical devices such as wound dressings must undergo stringent laboratory testing during product development to satisfy safety and performance requirements of regulatory authorities. Following regulatory approval, further in vitro laboratory tests are commonly undertaken to compare performance characteristics of commercial products. From a microbiological perspective specifically, a variety of internationally recognised in vitro test methods, and also customised in vitro tests methods are available for investigating performance characteristics such as microbial binding, microbial barrier, antimicrobial efficacy and antibiofilm efficacy. Such test methods, together with challenges in testing antimicrobial dressings will be addressed in this paper.
