Healing of experimental excisional wounds in the rat palate. III. Effects of radiation on wound healing.

The effects of radiation on the healing of standardized, excisional wounds in the palate was studied in 48 white rats of the Sprague-Dawley strain. A single dose radiation of respectively 16 Gy to one group and 20 Gy to another was given three weeks before the excisional wounds were made. Healing of the wounds was followed for three weeks in the irradiated groups and also in one control group. Three rats were killed at 0, 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 14 and 21 days from each group. The wound area was measured with a square millimeter grid on photographs taken with standardized technique and histological analysis of serial sections from the wound region performed. The results showed that the wound healing was heavily disturbed in the 20 Gy group with more or less extended bone necrosis and inflammatory reactions with a large open wound surface after three weeks, whereas in the 16 Gy group the healing was somewhat slower than the control group but not as complicated as in the 20 Gy group.