Advances in biomaterials for preventing tissue adhesion

Adhesion is one of the most common postsurgical complications, occurring simultaneously as the damaged tissue heals. Accompanied by symptoms such as inflammation, pain and even dyskinesia in particular circumstances, tissue adhesion has substantially compromised the quality of life of patients. Instead of passive treatment, which involves high cost and prolonged hospital stay, active intervention to prevent the adhesion from happening has been accepted as the optimized strategy against this complication. Herein, this paper will cover not only the mechanism of adhesion forming, but also the biomaterials and medicines used in its prevention. Apart from acting as a direct barrier, biomaterials also show promising anti-adhesive bioactivity though their intrinsic physical and chemical are still not completely unveiled. Considering the diversity of human tissue organization, it is imperative that various biomaterials in combination with specific medicine could be tuned to fit the microenvironment of targeted tissues. With the illustration of different adhesion mechanism and solutions, we hope this review can become a beacon and further inspires the development of anti-adhesion biomedicines.