A pilot study published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery – Global Open outlines a new method that reconstructs large, severe skin wounds and speeds recovery.
Skin and surrounding tissue cannot heal on its own after serious damage, such as severe burns, traumatic injuries, or cancer-related skin removal. Instead, clinicians must reconstruct skin layers using small sections of healthy skin in a process called skin grafting. While optimal for color matching and structural integrity, skin grafting is less effective in more severe cases where the wound has poor blood flow, often involving exposed bones, tendons, and wounds caused by radiation therapy.
In the 1980s, the development of dermal regenerative templates (DRTs) revolutionized the field, allowing wound reconstruction without requiring living human skin tissue. Instead, DRTs are engineered dual-layer skin substitutes that mimic the human skin extracellular matrix. After 2-4 weeks, the patient’s own blood vessels and cells migrate into the matrix, building a new dermal layer of tissue. The DRT is then no longer needed and can be replaced with a thin skin graft to complete the outer layer. While this technique is critical for ...