A PROSPECTIVE RANDOMIZED CLINICAL AND HISTOLOGICAL STUDY OF SUPERFICIAL BURN WOUND-HEALING WITH HONEY AND SILVER SULFADIAZINE

Histological and clinical studies of wound healing have been made on c omparable fresh partial thickness burns with honey dressing or silver sulfadiazine (SSD) in two groups of 25 randomly allocated patients. Of the wounds treated with honey 84 per cent showed satisfactory epithel ialization by the 7th day, and in 100 per cent of the patients by the 21st day. In wounds treated with silver sulfadiazine, epithelializatio n occurred by the 7th day in 72 per cent of the patients and in 84 per cent of patients by 21 days. Histological evidence of reparative acti vity was seen in 80 per cent of wounds treated with the honey dressing by the 7th day with minimal inflammation. Fifty two per cent of the s ilver sulfadiazine treated wounds showed reparative activity with infl ammatory changes by the 7th day. Reparative activity reached 100 per c ent by 21 days with the honey dressing and 84 per cent with SSD. Thus in honey dressed wounds, early subsidence of acute inflammatory change s, better control of infection and quicker wound healing was observed while in the SSD treated wounds sustained inflammatory reaction was no ted even on epithelialization. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd for ISBI. All rights reserved.