Applications of conductive hydrogels in repair of spinal cord injury:a review
Spinal cord injury,a severe injury of the central nervous system,shows high disability and mortality rate and seriously affects the patients'quality of life.It is difficult to restore the spinal cord and achieve satisfactory neurological function improvement with various current treatments for spinal cord injury.Electric stimulation can accelerate axonal growth and myelination and promote nervous tissue repair and regeneration.Conductive hydrogels that can load electric stimulation have great potential in the treatment of spinal cord injuries.Under electric stimulation,different types of conductive hydrogels have different characteristics and can perform a variety of functions.However,clinicians still lack a comprehensive understanding of their application effects in repair of spinal cord injury.To this end,the authors reviewed the research progress on the role of electric stimulation as well as the characteristics and applications of different types of conductive hydrogels in repair of spinal cord injury to provide references for the synthesis and clinical transformation of conductive hydrogels for repair of spinal cord injury.