New Military Medicine study highlights the potential of Succor™ Combat Foam for early burn care

Treating a serious burn often begins far from definitive care. In battlefield and other austere settings, providers may have limited time and supplies and may be unable to repeatedly clean or redress a wound. Critical Innovations is developing Succor™ Combat Foam for Large Burn Wounds as a lightweight, portable technology designed for rapid application and easier removal when a wound needs to be reassessed.

A new study published in Military Medicine provides encouraging preclinical evidence supporting that approach. In a 7-day large-animal model of partial-thickness burns, researchers evaluated wounds with and without bacterial contamination and compared the antibiotic-containing Succor™ formulation with silver sulfadiazine, the same hydrogel without antibiotics, and no treatment. The study reported significantly less bacterial colonization in the Succor™ group than in all three comparator groups, along with improvement across multiple tissue-level measures of wound healing.

These findings build on Critical Innovations’ earlier pilot study and represent another step toward a practical early burn care option for military and civilian emergency settings. Additional research is needed before clinical use, including evaluation over longer treatment periods and larger wound areas.

Read the full article in Military Medicine.

Representative Day-7 wound images from the study. Across both non-inoculated and bacterially inoculated wounds, the antibiotic hydrogel group (HA) showed visibly greater healing than the control (CO), silver sulfadiazine (SS), and hydrogel vehicle (HV) groups. Images are representative; study conclusions were based on blinded histopathologic assessment. Source: Donaldson RI et al., Military Medicine. 2026;191(Suppl 1):160–167. CC BY 4.0.

CAUTION: Succor™ Combat Foam is an investigational medical technology and is not available for commercial sale. It has not been cleared or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for human use. The study described above was conducted in animals; results may not predict human outcomes, and safety and effectiveness in humans have not been established.