Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Bioengineered Skin Grafts For Burn VictimsVidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/DUmPV6MDxn4/The treatment of severe burns requires replacement of destroyed skin with skin grafts.  From the Swiss company Cutiss, a spin-off from the University of Zurich, comes better skin graft technology called DenovoSkin. Starting with a postage stamp-sized sample of a patient’s skin as a cell source, in just 4 weeks Cutiss can grow multiple, personalized bilayer skin grafts 10 times that size that have both epidermal and dermal layers. The result skin for grafting is elastic, grows with the patient, reduces scarring, and, because, it is derived from the patient’s own cells, it will not be rejected. The ability to grow with the patient is critical for pediatric burn patients.Traditional split-thickness skin grafts tend to scar, and can only be harvested from the burn victim ’s remaining healthy skin. That can be as little as 40% of the total pre-burn skin. Split thickness graft harvesting also leaves a donor site that can be