WOUND HEALING: ROLE OF TRADITIONAL HERBAL MEDICINE TREATMENT

This review paper highlights about wound healing, a vital physiological process of tissue repair or remodelling, which still remains a challenge in the Indian healthcare system. Different wound dressings containing antibiotics and antibacterial agents, nanoparticle based wound dressings prevent bacterial infection and bio film formation in the wound bed. However, the use of antibiotics, allopathic drugs and antibacterial nanoparticles in wound healing has some limitations since most of these antibacterial agents have side effects such as cytotoxicity. Furthermore, there is no efficient evidence-based therapy available for specific chronic wounds. Another problem is wound healing and wound management is very expensive health care, which poor people cannot afford to bear expenditure. There are a variety of herbal plants that have wound healing properties. Plant-based constituents have been extensively used for the treatment and management of different types of wounds. Folklore cultures employ a significant number of plants to treat cuts, wounds, and burns. Therefore, the use of Complementary and Alternative herbal Medicines (CAMs) is a promising approach to improvising clinical and medical challenges faced by non-healing chronic wounds. In addition to this, the use of natural plant derived substances are considered safe compared to synthetic molecules and can be much cheaper than conventional therapies.