Experts have stressed that silver wound dressings, despite the many doubts over how effective they are at the end of the day, are costing the NHS over a million Pounds every single year.

Silver is reported to possess anti-microbial properties and is used in various type of dressings for injuries, burns and ulcers. How it exactly ends up working is still not knows, but the metal is believed to stop microbes from spreading.

Over the past few years, the amount of funds the NHS spends on these products has managed to steeply rise, from some 23 Million Pounds in 2005 to 25 Million Pounds in 2006-07, as has been revealed in an editorial in the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin.

The most recent number, however, is a mere quarter of all the funds spent on wound dressings in that year, with silver dressings making up for about a-seventh of the total number of dressings.

In the published editorial, experts have stressed that the evidence supporting the use of silver dressings was not strong enough.

"Silver dressings are expensive and there have been few high-quality clinical trials to establish whether they have advantages over other, cheaper alternatives. Most of the studies that have been conducted have had considerable methodological limitations. With these factors in mind, we believe the routine use of silver dressings is not justified on clinical or cost-effectiveness grounds", the authors concluded.