ABSTRACT
Wound healing is an interesting subject for general and oral surgeons as well as for forensic pathologists. The sequence of events in healing of surgical scalpelincision has been extensively investigated and described in detail in all text-books of general biology, pathology and forensic pathology [walter and Israel 1979]. Since the discovery of laser in 1960 [Maiman 1960], many efforts have been made to involve this radiation in medicine particularly in Surgery [Mester et al 1971, Mihashi et al 1976 and Small et al 1973]. Co[2] laser has prooved to be a very useful device in inducing surgical incisions or excisions [Hall et al 1971, Strong 1973, dayman et al 1978 and Tuff and Carruth 1980]. Very recently, Co[2] laser has been used to induce rapid haemostasis and to minimize deformity in healing of surgical scalpel incisions of highly vascular delicate structures such as gum and oral mucosa [Leuomanen and Murman 1986 and Leuomanen 1987]. Although some work has been done to study the effect of laser radiation on intact oral mucosa using light microscopy [Sheila E. Fisher et al 1983 and Leuomanen and Murman 1986], however no body has studied yet the effect of laser radiation on healing of surgical scalpel incisions exposed immediatly or after sometimes to laser beam. Also, no body has envolved the scanning Electron Microscopy in the study of the effect of laser radiation on intact or damaged tissues in general. It is well known that the scanning electron microscopy has definitely made a most important contribution to study of natural as well as artificially exposed internal structures. While its resolving power is much higher than light microscopy, its great advantage over both light and transmission electron microscopy lies in the large depth of focus giving a three dimensional image which is easily perceived by human eye [Wilson and Robards, 1984]. In the present study, scanning electron microscopy has been used to demonstrate the appearance of scalpel incisions of gum exposed to laser immediatly or after few hours from inducing the incision