title: Tensile properties of the murine ventral vertical midline incision.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  In clinical surgery, the vertical midline abdominal incision is popular but associated with healing failures. A murine model of the ventral vertical midline incision was developed in order to study the healing of this incision type.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The strength of the wild type murine ventral abdominal wall in the midline was contained within the dermis; the linea alba made a negligible contribution. Unwounded abdominal wall had a downward trend (nonsignificant) in maximal tension between 12 and 29 weeks of age. The incision attained 50% of its final strength by postoperative day 40. The maximal tension of the ventral vertical midline incision was nearly that of unwounded abdominal wall by postwounding day 60; there was no difference in unwounded vs. wounded maximal tension at postwounding day 120.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  After 120 days of healing, the ventral vertical midline incision in the wild type mouse was not significantly different from age-matched nonwounded controls. About half of the final incisional strength was attained after 6 weeks of healing. The significance of this work was to establish the kinetics of wild type incisional healing in a model for which numerous genotypes and genetic tools would be available for subsequent study.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska, United States of America. macarlso@unmc.edu
authors.forename: Mark A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Carlson
authors.forename: Dennis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chakkalakal
mesh_terms: D034861:Abdominal Wall / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D013718:Tensile Strength / Q000502:physiology*; D014945:Wound Healing / Q000502:physiology