A case report of the treatment and care of decubitus ulcers in macaques with spinal cord injury

Abstract

Decubitus ulcers are a common spinal cord injury (SCI) complication that puts patients' lives in danger and has emerged as a more prevalent issue in modern clinical rehabilitation and care. Decubitus ulcers in humans can currently be treated in a number of different ways, but there are fewer studies on how to treat and care for decubitus ulcers in macaques. To treat a 20-year-old adult male macaque monkey with SCI and decubitus ulcers after a quarter transection of the thoracic spinal cord, a number of scientific care procedures and pharmaceutical treatments, such as dietary changes and topical or intravenous administration of medication, were carried out and continuously monitored in real-time. In comparison to the untreated group, we observed a significant improvement in decubitus wound healing in the macaques. In this article, we provide a good protocol for decubitus ulcer care after SCI and suggest that future experimental animal modeling needs to focus on issues such as care for postoperative complications.