Vodovnik L, Karba R
Faculty of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Med Biol Eng Comput. 1992 May;30(3):257-66. doi: 10.1007/BF02446963.
The healing of a cutaneous wound is accompanied by endogeneous electrical phenomena. Not knowing whether they represent merely a side-effect of the physiological processes which take course during healing or whether they play a much more important role as mediators of healing, externally applied electricity was examined as a therapeutic tool for the enhancement of natural regenerative processes. In the present review a historical literature survey dealing with human applications of electric current for wound healing acceleration is given. It presents a complete palette of heterogeneous studies, differing in the parameters of applied electric current, in delivery modes as well as in the types of wounds being stimulated. Because of all these differences, comparing the efficacy of the described methods is difficult and could hardly be objective. Therefore greater stress was laid upon the discussion concerning the problems in designing clinical studies (size of the sample observed, control group, ethics of the procedures), rationales for the employment and possible underlying mechanisms of particular methods, and problems of evaluating their efficacy. In spite of the extensive work performed in the field of electrical wound healing we remain only part way towards explaining the mechanisms by which electricity reinforces the regenerative capabilities of injured tissue as well as only part way towards the selection of the optimal stimulation method from among the published reports.
皮肤伤口的愈合伴随着内源性电现象。由于不清楚这些电现象仅仅是伤口愈合过程中生理过程的副作用，还是作为愈合介质发挥更重要的作用，因此人们对外加电作为促进自然再生过程的治疗工具进行了研究。在本综述中，给出了一份关于电流在加速伤口愈合方面的人体应用的历史文献综述。它呈现了一系列不同的研究，这些研究在施加电流的参数、传递模式以及所刺激伤口的类型等方面存在差异。由于所有这些差异，比较所描述方法的疗效很困难，而且几乎不可能做到客观。因此，更着重讨论了设计临床研究中的问题（观察样本的大小、对照组、程序的伦理问题）、特定方法的应用原理和可能的潜在机制，以及评估其疗效的问题。尽管在电刺激伤口愈合领域已经开展了大量工作，但在解释电增强受伤组织再生能力的机制方面，我们仍只取得了部分进展；在从已发表的报告中选择最佳刺激方法方面，也只取得了部分进展。
