Chronic wounds, such as diabetic ulcers and pressure injuries, remain a major global health burden, affecting over 40 million people worldwide and imposing significant socioeconomic strain. Hydrogel-based wound dressings have gained clinical attention for their ability to maintain moisture, mimic the extracellular matrix, and support tissue regeneration. However, traditional hydrogels often lack the mechanical robustness, antimicrobial efficacy, and dynamic responsiveness needed to treat complex wound environments effectively. To address these limitations, nanohybrid hydrogels, composite systems that integrate functional nanomaterials into hydrogel matrices, have emerged as intelligent platforms for advanced wound care. These systems enable multifunctional therapeutic action, including antibacterial activity, antioxidant regulation, angiogenesis promotion, immune modulation, and stimuli-responsive drug delivery. This review synthesizes recent advances in nanohybrid hydrogel design, beginning with an overview of traditional polymeric systems and their constraints. We categorize functional mechanisms according to biological targets and classify nanohybrid architectures by material type, including metal-based nanoparticles, nanozymes, carbon-based nanomaterials, polymeric nanogels, and metal–organic frameworks. Representative studies are summarized in a comparative table, and challenges related to biosafety, clinical translation, and design optimization are discussed. Nanohybrid hydrogels represent a rapidly evolving frontier in wound care, offering bioresponsive, multifunctional platforms with the potential to transform chronic wound management.

Sensor-integrated wound dressings place optical, electrochemical, biochemical, or wireless sensing modules within materials that are simultaneously responsible for wound contact and fluid management. In this setting, biobased polymers influence hydration, swelling, capillary transport, wet-state mechanics, retention of functional phases, and the local environment presented to the sensor. This review examines how chitosan, alginate, hyaluronic acid, cellulose, nanocellulose, bacterial cellulose, gelatin, collagen, and silk fibroin function as wound-contact layers, absorbent reservoirs, capillary supports, transition domains, and hosts for sensing components. Auxiliary phases, including PVA, PEDOT:PSS, carbon nanomaterials, MXenes, metal nanoparticles, responsive dyes, enzymes, and antibody-based recognition elements, are considered according to the conductivity, optical response, catalytic activity, antimicrobial function, or molecular selectivity they introduce into these matrices. Across the reviewed studies, signal reliability varied with exudate handling, sensing-zone exposure, fouling, wet-state stability, and the spatial organization of functional modules. We use these relationships to examine how material architecture stabilizes the sensing interface and to interpret validation in the wound-monitoring conditions under which each readout was tested.