History and Objectives: Every day a significant number of people are afflicted with burns and some of them die due to the extreme severity of lesions. Burns are commonly encountered in developing countries. Therefore the purely herbal fundermol ointment was formulated and produced in Iran for wound healing and reduction in mortality in these patients. This study was performed in order to determine the effect of this ointment on wound healing, hypertrophic scar formation and mortality in burned rats.

Materials and Methods: This interventional-experimental study was performed on male rats by producing a full-thickness (Third degree) burn in 20% of their body surface area by immersion of their shaved dorsal aspects in boiling water for 8 seconds. 24 hours after burn, fundermol ointment and sulfadiazine cream were topically applied. Wound healing was evaluated in these two groups and the control group. Wound healing was assessed by the percentage of healing the elapsed time before complete improvement and the frequency of hypertrophic scar formation.

Results: It took 48 days for the rats in the fundermol group (Group I) to show complete healing, this time was 68 (P<0.001) and 56 (P<0.005) days in the control and silver sulfadiazine (Group II) groups, respectively. More degrees of wound healing were observed in group I than the other ones. On the 39th day after the burn, 83%, 92% and 99% for the wounds were healed in the rats in the control group, group II and group I respectively (P<0.05). Rats in group I showed 6.5% more weight loss than those in group II (P<0.01). Hypertrophic scar was also less commonly observed in group I than group II.

Conclusion: Fundermol ointment is an effective medication for treatment of burn wounds. Further investigation in order to find out the mechanism of its effect is recommended.