New Tissue Fills Wound

Over weeks to months, the wound becomes sterile and slowly fills with new tissue. Systemic antibiotics are often required to aid the healing process. Sometimes skin and muscle must be surgically moved from other parts of the body to cover areas that would otherwise never completely heal.

Using the resurrected technique, doctors alter the usual cleaning regimen by sprinkling granulated sugar or spreading sugar paste in the wound two to four times a day, before applying new bandages. The sugar liquefies somewhat as it absorbs fluid from the wound, so it is simple to rinse out the sugar, along with dead tissue, at the next dressing change.

Doctors who use the method say that even dirty injuries are often germ-free after several days and that wounds seem to heal faster and more completely than with conventional treatments.

''The granulation tissue is much pinker and healthier,'' said Dr. B. G. Spell, a surgeon at the Methodist Rehabilitation Hospital in Jackson, Miss., who says he uses the technique daily to heal infected amputations and the deep pressure sores that plague paraplegics. ''The dead tissue breaks down more easily, so there's not as much debridement,'' he said.

In a series of articles in the British medical journal Lancet over the last five years, doctors at various European medical centers have reported success using the technique in a variety of situations in which nothing else worked. Dr. J. L. Trouillet at the Hopital Bichat in Paris described using granulated sugar bought from a supermarket for successful treatment of 19 critically ill cardiac surgery patient who had mediastinitis, a frequently deadly infection of the compartment in the chest that contains the heart.

Patients expecting high-tech medicine are often surprised to find their injuries sweetened. ''The doctors had mentioned that they were going to use 'wound sugar,' but it didn't register,'' said John Tagliabue, a New York Times reporter who was shot and seriously wounded last December while covering the revolution in Romania.

Like Cookie Crumbs

His wound was packed with sugar at the Klinikum in Munich, where he was moved for treatment. ''One day I noticed this sandy material on the sheets, like crumbs from eating cookies in bed.'' he said. ''Then it hit me: They really meant sugar.''