PURPOSE

Coumadin is being used widely in clinical setting; some of these patients require surgical interventions for various reasons. It has been our observation that Coumadin might decrease the rate wound healing. Since there was no controlled study in the literature testing the effects of the Coumadin on the wound healing, we designed an animal study to test our hypothesis.

METHOD

21 New Zealand White rabbits were randomly divided into 3 groups: 1) Control group; no Coumadin administered for the animals 2) second group was treated with Coumadin preoperatively and postoperatively. 3) Last group received the Coumadin postoperatively. Coumadin was given orally and INR was checked before treatment as a baseline and during the treatment. In each animal, four 6 mm circular full thickness wounds were made on each ear. These animals were followed daily for 7 days. At day 7, rabbits were euthanized; the wounds were harvested, evaluated and histologically examined. Then the epithelial gap, were measured using a microscope connected to a software.

RESULTS
There was no statistically significant difference among the different groups in terms of epithelialization gap.

CONCLUSION

Based on this study it does not seem that Coumadin alters the epitalialization rate in the Rabbit model and our clinical observation most probably was related to co-morbidities of the patients consuming Coumadin.