Expansion techniques for skin grafts : comparison between mesh and Meek island (sandwich-) grafts. Discussion

In skin grafting operations for patients with extensive burn injuries, mesh techniques are often employed to enlarge the effective surface area covered by autografts. However, substantial strips of autograft are required and the distribution of autograft elements on the wound surface is relatively uneconomical. An alternative technique for expanding autografts, first described by Meek in 1958, makes use of a special dermatome and prefolded gauzes to obtain a regular expansion of autograft squares from small pieces of split skin grafts