Treatment with silver-containing wound dressings is becoming an increasingly popular strategy to eliminate growth of opportunistic wound pathogens during the healing process. However, there are concerns over the possible side-effects of silver to the patient; coupled to the cost of silver as an ingredient there is a desire to ensure that wound dressings contain the least quantity of active ingredient to ensure the minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) of silver is maintained in the wound environment. This requires the ability to determine the efficacy of silver directly within the wound environment; an extremely complicated task that is difficult using classical (plate counting) microbiological assays because these cannot be conducted in situ. Here, we report a quantitative method for determining the efficacy of silver in wound dressings using an isothermal calorimetric method. The growth curves of P. aeruginosa (NCIMB 8628) were recorded in growth medium and in growth medium containing AQUACEL Ag Hydrofiber dressing. It was found that 10 mg of dressing was sufficient to ensure no detectable growth of organism in 2.5 mL of medium inoculated to 10(6) cfu/mL. This corresponded to a silver load of 1.1x10(-6) moles (equivalent to 4.4x10(-4) M, in the volume of medium used in the experiment). Experiments conducted with silver nitrate rather than dressing indicated the MBC of silver against P. aeruginosa was 1x10(-4) M. The results suggested that not all of the silver in the dressing was bioavailable, at least over the lifetime of the experiment. One advantage of this effect would be the lack of excess availability of the silver, which allays fears of potential toxicity to the patient and may provide an extended period of time over which the dressing is bactericidal.