EFFECT OF COMPLETE AND PARTIAL STARVATION ON THE RATE OF FIBROPLASIA IN THE HEALING WOUND

Abstract

The effect of complete and partial starvation on the healing of wounds is of fundamental importance to the surgeon. Malnourished patients must occasionally be subjected to surgical procedures, and often it is necessary to restrict the amount of diet after operation. Only too frequently we observe the wounds of undernourished patients, particularly those of children, healing slowly and becoming infected.1 Unfortunately, in the clinic, however, it is not always possible to establish the exact nature of a malnutrition or to determine the deficiency of the previous diet which produced it. So, too, it is quite impossible to tell whether a prolonged healing time of a wound is the result of malnutrition alone or of other causes more obscure. To interpret adequately the relation of diet to the healing wound, one must have carefully collected data on experimental animals—data which give the preoperative state of nutrition and the dietary regimen