Techniques and Processing

Today exist several techniques and processing, which permit one to obtain skin grafts, micrografts, skin substitutes offering a wide choice to clinicians in relation to needs of the patients. The techniques to obtain skin grafts are well established and still are still constantly developed to improve the healing of wounds or trauma in different areas of body. In the western world, the first techniques of skin grafting date back to 1804 and at the end of this century were better described as the methods of full-thickness grafting. In the early twentieth century, different authors described the skin expansion methods until being able to culture human keratinocytes. Dermal and epidermal grafts are constituted by a variable amount of both dermis and full-thickness skin providing a major resurfacing and stability to the wound. These grafts can be obtained through different tools, including the Meek-Waal dermatome, the flypaper technique, skin expansion with meshers, Xpansion® system, fractional skin harvesting, suction blister epidermal grafting, providing good results in terms of wound healing and re-epithelialization. In the last years, the marketing of innovative tools, such as CelluTome™ Epidermal Harvesting Device, Recell® and Rigenera® technology, offered to clinicians the advantage to reduce the execution time for skin grafting, improving the wound healing in terms of time and quality of life for the patients. Finally, the tissue engineering certainly contributed to ameliorate the field of regenerative medicine, creating engineered skin substitutes adaptable to every clinical need.