Demonstration of the Rat Ischemic Skin Wound Model

Abstract

The propensity for chronic wounds in humans increases with ageing, disease conditions such as diabetes and impaired cardiovascular function, and unrelieved pressure due to immobility. Animal models have been developed that attempt to mimic these conditions for the purpose of furthering our understanding of the complexity of chronic wounds. The model described herein is a rat ischemic skin flap model that permits a prolonged reduction of blood flow resulting in wounds that become ischemic and resemble a chronic wound phenotype (reduced vascularization, increased inflammation and delayed wound closure). It consists of a bipedicled dorsal flap with 2 ischemic wounds placed centrally and 2 nonischemic wounds lateral to the flap as controls. A novel addition to this ischemic skin flap model is the placement of a silicone sheet beneath the flap that functions as a barrier and a splint to prevent revascularization and reduce contraction as the wounds heal. Despite the debate of using rats for wound healing studies due to their quite distinct anatomic and physiologic differences compared to humans (i.e., the presence of a panniculus carnosus muscle, short life-span, increased number of hair follicles, and their ability to heal infected wounds) the modifications employed in this model make it a valuable alternative to previously developed ischemic skin flap models. Video LinkThe video component of this article can be found at

Compromised Wound Healing in Ischemic Type 2 Diabetic Rats

“…Skin flaps are one of the classic approaches to induce ischemia. There are various types of flap models used for ischemic wound research: U shape peninsular incision with 2:1 length-to-width ratio, which can cause nearly 40% massive necrosis of the flap [ 40 ]; double pedicle ischemic model on white pigs and rats, which have a length-to-width ratio of 1.5:1, exhibited a severe ischemic state [ 41 ]. Utilizing our type 2 diabetic animal model and taking examples from the aforementioned references, we created a double pedicle flap to induce a relative ischemic condition for the wound healing study.…”

Dressing with epigallocatechin gallate nanoparticles for wound regeneration

“…We also investigated the effects in wound healing between the various different wound dressing samples when applied to a bacterial infected skin wound on Sprague‐Dawley rats. It was reported that the rat species often employed to provide a suitable skin area for incisional and excisional wounding and tissue collection . It was taken into careful consideration that the skin of a rat and a human are different anatomically.…”

Photobiomodulation plus Adipose-derived Stem Cells Improve Healing of Ischemic Infected Wounds in Type 2 Diabetic Rats

“…According to the literature, the bipedicle skin flap is an established model of ischemia [51][52][53] . In the current experiment, for the first time, we initially created a bipedicle skin flap on the back of each rat followed by an excisional wound in the flap.…”