A preliminary study of cutaneous wound healing on the upper eyelid in a small Brazilian population using Rhizophora mangle-based cream.

Plants used in traditional medicine offer an affordable new alternative in tissue repair therapy. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the 5% Rhizophora mangle cream compared to the 5% dexpanthenol cream in healing open surgical wounds on the upper eyelid. A total of 18 patients were submitted to the experiment and divided into 2 groups with 9 patients each who used topically and daily 5% dexpanthenol cream (control group) or 5% R.mangle cream (intervention group) for 7 days. Clinical, morphometric and histomorphometric analyses of wounds and surgical procedures for skin removal were performed. In the morphometric analysis, all wounds treated with R.mangle and dexpanthenol creams showed complete macroscopic scars, without inflammatory signs and infection free. The skin hydration values in pre and post application periods of the cream were 43.82 ± 43.93 and 62.12 ± 67.40 respectively. The histomorphometric study showed lower values of epithelium distance in R. mangle group and higher in dexpanthenol group with significant difference between groups (p < 0.05). The R.mangle 5% cream proved to be effective in healing wounds of human upper eyelid skin with a significant improvement in epithelization compared to dexpanthenol 5% cream.