Initial healing of sternotomy wounds: correlation between preoperative data and wound inflammatory cell response

Local inflammation after a surgical incision is an essential prerequisite for wound healing and later scar formation both in children and adults. However, the underlying regulatory mechanisms are still poorly known and need further investigations. In this study, one hundred sternotomy patients, operated on routinely for cardiac disease, were studied with the Cellstick device to harvest wound inflammatory cells for differential count and subsequent computerized analysis using an artificial neural network. As a result a nonparametric line of ranked nodes was obtained reflecting wound inflammatory cell response in individual patients at hour 24 post surgery. A number of preoperative and operative parameters were recorded to see their possible correlation with the node values of wound inflammatory cell response. It was found that the age of the patient had a remarkable role in this respect while a majority of laboratory values, if within reference values of healthy persons, had a minor correlation or no correlation at all. Therefore, individual and genetic factors seemed to play a dominant role providing that the patient had a good or moderate general condition and surgical site infection was avoided.