Scanning electron microscopy of the structural reconstruction of the abdominal wall after experimental paramedian...

The various healing stages of experimental paramedian incisions in the right rectus sheath of 36 albino rats were examined by utilizing the scanning electron and the light microscope. The successive reconstruction processes were visualized stereoscopically at a cellular level. During the inflammatory stage (7 days) various inflammatory cells accumulated around a wide network of trabeculae which traversed the gap of the wound. The fibrillogenetic stage increased in the period between the 2nd and 12th weeks postoperatively. Various stages of fiber maturation were visualized. Mechanisms of fiber formation, maturation, and junction between the newly formed fibers and the old healthy ones at the wound margin were also seen three dimensionally and described. The newly formed fibers were always arranged parallel to each other in a definite direction. This direction had a constant angular relationship to the long axis of the wound, i.e., the line of incision, regardless of the direction of the incision itself. This constant relationship might prove to be useful to the surgeon while choosing his incision in the anterior abdominal wall.