Alternatives to Skin Grafts

Skin grafting is a procedure used to treat severe burns and other skin-damaging injuries and can be quite painful to endure. It requires doctors to remove a patch of skin (or graft) from a donor site and to transplant this patch onto a damaged skin surface. Donor sites are typically areas of the patient's body with an abundance of skin that can be hidden easily by clothes, such as the inner thighs or buttocks. Once a graft of skin is removed, it is either stitched or stapled over the damaged area. Luckily, there are less painful alternatives available.

Spray-On Skin Cells

• Spray-on skin cells is a technique that can be used to treat second-degree burns, or burns that damage the top two layers of skin (for third-degree burns, or burns that affect the third layer of skin, grafting is still necessary). According to technologyreview.com, for the procedure to work, a small sample of a skin tissue needs to be taken from the patient. Since the sample is so small and will likely not leave a noticeable mark afterwards, it should be taken from as close to the damaged area as possible. This will help new skin match the surrounding skin's color and texture. The sample tissue is then put in a special incubating unit with a solution of enzymes that extract the skin's basal cells, or epidermis stem cells. Physicians can then spray this stem-cell solution directly on to a patient's wounds and new skin should begin to form. According to the above source, the spray-on skin cell technique can heal burn areas up to 50 square inches in size, and the ratio between the size of the area it can treat and the size of the required sample is 80 to 1. So healing a 50-square-inch wound would require a tissue sample that is slightly over one half square inch.

Artificial Skin

• Another alterative to skin grafts is using artificial skin. Unlike spray-on skin cells, which help patients grow their own natural skin, artificial skin is grown in trays, and is not genetically specific to any individual. According to an article on dailymail.co.uk, growing artificial skin requires you to chemically manipulate fibroblasts, which are cells found in the human that produce collagen. Collagen is the protein responsible for giving skin its elasticity and strength, and by tricking fibroblasts into overproducing collagen, sections of artificial skin--that are just as thick as real skin-- can eventually be formed. According to the above source, it takes about six or seven weeks for collagen and cells to weave together and form the synthetic, skin-like material, which can then be applied to wounds.