Investigation of the therapeutic effects of medicinal leech treatment on lower extremity ischemia–reperfusion injury

OBJECTIVES: This study aims to investigate the therapeutic effects of medical leech treatment (MLT) on ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injuries in the lower extremities of rats. METHODS: A total of 18 Wistar Albino rats were used and randomly assigned to three groups: Sham (n=6), I/R (n=6), and MLT (n=6). The I/R group rats underwent I/R induction in the femoral artery using an atraumatic vascular clamp. The same was done for the MLT group, after which MLT was carried out on the gastrocnemius muscle region of each rat. Histopathological analysis of the tissue and biochemical analysis was performed on the serum and tissue samples of the rats of each group. RESULTS: According to the histopathological analysis, the scores of edema, degeneration, necrosis and inflammation of the MLT group were significantly lower than the I/R group (p