Effect of Medicinal Plants on Episiotomy Wound Healing In Iran: A Systematic Review Study

Delay in episiotomy wound healing is associated with an increased risk of infection; prevention of perineal wound infection is a major component of daily care for mothers. For more quickly healing of episiotomy wounds, low cost, effective, convenient, accessible and acceptable methods are considered by women; medicinal plants are of these methods. Therefore, this systematic review was performed with aim to investigate the effects of medicinal plants on the episiotomy wound healing in Iran.

Electronic search was done in databases of Iranmedex, Magiran, SID, Web of Science, Science Direct, Scopus, Pubmed, as well as Google Scholar search engine with Persian and English keywords including: Episiotomy, Wound healing, Perineum, Herbal Medicine, and Medicinal Plants. Combined searches of the keywords was performed using OR and boolean AND operators. The search period was from observation to December 2019. According to the CONSORT 2010 checklist, the studies with a score of ≥18 were included in the study. Data analysis was performed qualitatively.

In this study, 28 clinical trials including 19 types of medicinal plants were studied. According to the results of the studies, most plants were effective in episiotomy wound healing.

Plants such as as Aloe Vera, Turmeric and Lavender that have anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and antioxidant properties are desirable options for wound healing. Due to insufficient number of articles in some cases and inconsistency in the results of some other articles, we can't definitively comment about these plants. Therefore, for definitive effectiveness of these interventions, further studies with larger sample size are recommended.