This website created for Brown University, Bio 108, Organ Replacement. Others can be found at: http://biomed.brown.edu/Courses/BI108/BI108.html

 

All of us are familiar with skin damage.  Our skin can be cut, bruised, scraped or punctured in a myriad of different ways.  However, most of us take for granted that these wounds will be healed by our own body without any intervention.  While this is usually the case, there are instances when the skin is damage terribly, when all of the layers of skin, and even underlying tissue is destroyed.  In these circumstances, if the body is left to heal itself, terrible scarring will occur, with the edges of healthy flesh pulling together, causing terribly deforming contractures.  To avoid this deforming process, patients with major skin damage can be given skin grafts.

A skin graft is a piece of skin taken from the patient, (an autograft) a donor (an allograft)  or even from a donor of a different species (a xenograft)  The goal is to transplant living cells into a wound, and have those cells be incorporated into the recipients body.

There are many reasons why a person would need a skin graft, and many techniques to get it done.  This website is meant to explore this area of medicine, and helpfully to give the reader a sense of the field.