NEW DRUGS USED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 October 1943, Page 3

NEW DRUGS USED

TREATMENT OF WOUNDS. GOOD RESULTS RECORDED. During the present war, widespread use has been made of chemotherapeutic drugs, such as the sulphonamides, for treating the wounded. These drugs, which may be taken by the mouth or applied directly to the wound, are bacteriostatic; that is, they prevent the bacteria in the blood from multiplying by depriving them of certain substances essential to their growth. The result is that infected wounds are much less common today than they were in the last war. But there are still some wounded men who either in spite of this treatment or probably owing to its inadequate application, arrive at the base hospital with their wounds in a festering condition. In these cases, the- sulphonamide drugs are unable to act efficiently by trial application. In a hospital behind the Egyptian front, where injuries to bones and joints are specially dealt with and where many of the worst cases of wounded are concentrated, two officers of the British Army Medical Service decided to try introducing proflavine pcwder s directly into infected wounds or this type. Experimental work had shown that proflavine which is an acridine dye, well known for its antiseptic properties, is relatively nonpoisonous, and yet has a strong killing effect on a great variety of bacteria. But by the conventional method of application, which was as a 1 in 1,000 aqueous solution on gauze, 80 per cent of the dye was taken up and fixed by the fibres of the gauze, leaving only 20 per cent of the dye available to combat the infection.

The new method of applying the powder directly to the wound utilizes the drug much more effectively, and successful results have been obtained with the first series of 80 patients treated in this way. In some cases the powder was strikingly successful when other methods had failed. Where the infecting agents are staphylococci, one of the common organisms causing wound infection, boils, and blood poisoning. proflavine powder appears to be more efficient in controlling or eliminating infection than any other drug so far tried.