Comparison and Evaluation of Seven Animal Models of Ischemic Skin Wound: A Review Article

Focusing on pathophysiology, prevention, and treatment of ischemic wounds is apriority for medical and basic scientists in order to develop new clinical approaches. However it is not always easy for researchers to choose optimal animal models for their particular assessments. This review provides concise information on all currently available ischemic animal models, including rabbits’ ear ischemic models, axial skin flaps (axial pattern flaps), burns, ischemic limbs, localized ischemic wounds, pressure ulcers, and skin flaps, along with their citations as a measure of their acceptance among other researchers. We searched the numerous databases consisting of PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, and Google Scholar. Key words included ischemic wound, skin, and animals alone or in combination. Some important features of the seven types of ischemia as well as their results are presented in Tables 1 -7. Table eight presents the results of entire groups of ischemic animal models, with their number of papers, number of wounds, and total and average Google Scholar citations, and web of science citations. We found that rabbits’ ear ischemic models, localized ischemic wounds, and pressure ulcers have the highest total and average citations amongst the studied groups. It was concluded that the rabbits’ ear ischemic model, rat pressure ulcer models, and localized ischemic wound models, have made the greatest contribution to our understanding of the pathophysiology of the ischemic wounds and increased production of new therapeutic protocols based on the citations reported by Google scholar and the web of science databases between 1977 and 2017.