A study of the critical bacterial inoculum to cause a stimulus to wound healing.

Results of previous work have shown that wounds infected with gram-negative bacteria may be stronger than uninfected wounds. The inoculum in these studies was about 2 X 10(7) organisms. Laparotomy wounds were swabbed with inocula of from 10(2) to 10(9) organisms, Escherichia coli. Only with inocula of 10(6) or greater were all parts of all wounds infected by gross inspection. All wounds inoculated with 10(7) organisms, or more, were significantly stronger than the wounds of the control group on the 14th day. A smaller inoculum--10(3) to 10(6)--also resulted in stronger wounds, but not consistently so.