Laser therapy converts diabetic wound healing to normal healing.

OBJECTIVE

We have determined optimal laser dosimetric parameters in comparison with polychromatic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that can speed up healing in four animal models: non-diabetic oval full-thickness wounds, diabetic oval full-thickness wounds, non-diabetic burns, and diabetic burns in Sprague-Dawley rats.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This series of studies used 532-, 633-, 810-, 980-, and 10,600-nm lasers (visible to far infrared) and polychromatic LED clusters (510-872 nm, visible to infrared) as photon sources. Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 893) were used; however, animals that died before and during the experiments from anesthesia accidents and for any other reason were excluded from statistical analysis.

RESULTS

The improvements seen (>10% improvement of impairment) show that phototherapy with the 633-nm laser is quite promising for alleviating diabetic wound and burn healing, and exhibited the best results with 38.5% and 53.4% improvements, respectively.

CONCLUSION

In this induced-diabetes model, wound and burn healing were improved by 40.3% and 45%, respectively, in 633-nm laser dosimetry experiments, and diabetic wound and burn healing was accelerated by phototherapy. This indicates that the healing rate was normalized in the phototherapy-treated diabetic rats. In view of these interesting findings, 633-nm laser therapy given three times per week at 4.71 J/cm(2) per dose for diabetic burns, and three times per week at 2.35 J/cm(2) per dose for diabetic wound healing are recommended as actual doses for human clinical trials, especially after major surgery in those with impaired healing, such as diabetics and the elderly.