The Potential of Squid Pen Powder as an Alternative Wound Healing Agent

Chitin is found widely in nature as the skeletal materials of crustaceans. Chitin is the second most abundant natural polysaccharide after cellulose on earth. Chitin and its derivative, chitosan, are attracting increasingly more attention recently because of its physicochemical and biological characteristics. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of Squid Pen Powder (SPP) in accelerating wound healing. This is a quantitative basic experimental study utilizing the crossover design to measure the wound reduction rate. The research was conducted at Basak, San Nicolas, Cebu City where forty respondents were sought based on a definite inclusion criteria using simple random sampling technique. Twenty of the respondents became the experimental group who received SPP as wound healing agent and the other twenty became the control group who only received wound cleansing, which was also done on the experimental group. All wounds, after baseline assessment were measured by taking a picture of the wound beside a ruler and evaluated daily using the Royal Marsden Wound Assessment Chart until wound healing occurred to monitor wound changes. Wound photo was then used to obtain wound area using the KLONK Image Measurement Software. After data gathering, T-test of two-independent samples was utilized as statistical treatment to determine if there is a significant difference of the mean wound healing reduction rate and the mean wound healing duration between two groups. Calculations were done using the Microsoft Excel 2007 and MiniTab software. Results revealed that SPP significantly accelerate wound healing reduction rate (p-value=0.001, 95% CI: -5.68, -1.58) and wound healing duration (p-value=0.002, 95% CI: 0.535, 2.465).

Keywords - Chitin, wound healing agent, Squid Pen Powder, wound reduction rate, wound duration.