INHIBITION OF WOUND CONTRACTION BY POINT-TO-POINT ADHERENT SPLINTAGE

The contractile force generated by the healing wound can be visualized as the sum of the forces of contraction developed across each of the minute segments of the scar. If splintage is effected in such a way th at the splint itself adheres to the scar, each small segment of the sp lint needs to be rigid enough to resist only the minute contractile fo rce generated by the corresponding small segment of the scar. This hyp othesis was tested by means of an experiment using 30 adult white rats . Two full-thickness wounds were created on the backs of each animal a nd covered with split-thickness skin grafts. One of the grafted areas was splinted by an adherent acrylic membrane and the other was left un splinted, acting as the control. At 8 weeks, the splinted grafts had r etained 95 percent of the original size. The difference between the sp linted and unsplinted grafts was statistically significant. Further ev aluation of the principle of adherent nonrigid splintage could lead to its application in the clinical context.