Self-Adaptive Wound Dressings for Wound Healing and Repair

Skin plays critical roles in defending against external threats and maintaining homeostasis. However, wound repair is frequently impeded by infection, oxidative stress, and chronic inflammation, especially in pathological conditions. Traditional dressings offer passive protection but lack responsiveness to the evolving wound environment. Self-adaptive wound dressings dynamically interact with wound microenvironments, exhibiting stimuli-responsiveness, controlled therapeutic release, mechanical adaptability, and multifunctional bioactivities, thereby offering tailored support across diverse stages of wound repair. This review provides a comprehensive overview of self-adaptive wound dressings, beginning with the biological basis of skin repair and factors that impede healing in chronic wounds. Traditional and self-adaptive dressings are compared, emphasizing advances in material design, structural engineering, and functional integration. Recent advances in key platforms, including hydrogels, films, sponges, microneedles, nanofibers, wearable biosensors, and nano/microparticle-based systems, are critically evaluated for their roles in managing acute, chronic, and complex wounds. Finally, current challenges in clinical translation, including biosafety, scalability, and personalization, are highlighted, and future directions for intelligent wound care are proposed. This review aims to inform the rational design of advanced self-adaptive wound dressings and promote their integration into precision wound therapy.