Abstract
To test the hypothesis that lowering the haemoglobin concentration pre-operatively improves wound healing 52 Wistar rats were randomly allocated into two groups: group ‘A’ were haemodiluted pre-operatively by ten per cent of their blood volume; group ‘B’ were untreated controls. All rats were subject to laparotomy and one leg rendered ischaemic. Two 2 centimetre long full thickness skin incisions were made in each leg and sutured. At seven days the wound strengths were measured by tensometry and quantitative wound collagen content was performed. A second experiment was performed employing 28 rats allocated into two similar groups. In this experiment the study group were repeatedly diluted on alternate post-operative days whereas controls were sham diluted. The experiments were otherwise identical.
Compared with controls, haemodilution did not improve wound strength in non-ischaemic limbs but did improve wound strenth in ischaemic limbs in experiment two (p ⩽ 0.001).
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