Significant Difference In Healing Rates Research Articles

Measurement and prediction of progress in delayed wound healing.

Thirty chronic leg ulcers have been studied under controlled conditions until complete healing occurred. Measurement was performed weekly using a computer-linked stereocamera which is capable of measuring skin defects noninvasively with errors of less than 2%. There was a significant difference in healing rate for the first two weeks between clean ulcers entering the trial directly and ulcers admitted first for cleansing before joining the trial. The difference suggests that the weekly healing rate of an ulcer may take up to 2 weeks to respond to a new form of treatment. Absolute ulcer size, change in ulcer size and rate of epithelial migration did not correlate well with time to complete healing, but percentage change in area in the third week was found to be the parameter which gave the earliest close correlation with time to complete healing. Using this parameter, on the data available it was found that time to complete healing could be predicted to within one week for 50% of the ulcers, making this a simple and useful early predictor of treatment efficiency.

Ulcer complications during short-term therapy of duodenal ulcer with active agents and placebo

One of the surprises of the flood of placebocontrolled, endoscopic, double-blind studies of duodenal ulcer healing in the last 10 yr has been the realization that placebo therapy results in healing in up to 50% of patients treated for 4-6 wk and may approach the rate of healing noted with active therapy* after this time (;1,2). For example, in a large American multicenter double-blind study of cimetidine versus placebo for duodenal ulcer (3), a significant difference in healing rates was evident only at 2 wk but not at 4 or 6 wk. Even more striking is the similarity in symptom relief between placebo and active agents: no statistically significant differences are demonstrable in most studies (4-6). These observations have led some to conclude that ulcer therapy with currently available drugs such as antacids, antisecretory agents, or sucralfate may not be truly efficacious (7) and others to conclude that placebo treatment for peptic ulcer might be the ideal therapy: safe, cheap, and effective (8). These conclusions, however, may be wrong. Because of the relatively small size of each individual study, the good overall results with placebo might mask rare but important complications or problems that might be avoided by using active agents. To evaluate this, we examined the results of 48 double-

Ranitidine compared with cimetidine in the short-term healing of duodenal ulcer

The efficacy of ranitidine (150 mg twice daily) and cimetidine (200 mg three times daily and 400 mg at night) in the short-term healing of duodenal ulcer has been assessed in a randomized controlled trial involving 106 patients. There were 3 drop-outs. Forty-two out of 53 patients (79%) treated with ranitidine had healed ulcers at 4 weeks compared with 37 out of 50 treated with cimetidine (74%). This difference is not significant. At 8 weeks the healing rate for ranitidine (98%) was significantly greater than that for cimetidine (86%) (P less than 0.05). There was no significant difference in healing rates between men and women and between smokers and non-smokers. Side effects were not a problem with either drug. There were no differences of clinical significance between laboratory values in the two treatment groups, although a minor increase in mean creatinine levels occurred in the cimetidine-treated group.