Journal of Clinical & Experimental Dermatology Research
Open Access
ISSN: 2155-9554
ISSN: 2155-9554
Martin Purschke, Falguni A Asrani, Sameer A Sabir, William A Farinelli and R Rox Anderson
Massachusetts General Hospital-Harvard Medical School, USA
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Clin Exp Dermatol Res
Epidermal suction blister grafting is an effective treatment for wounds or vitiligo but tedious and limited to small areas. We developed two novel strategies to create â??fractionalâ? epidermal grafts and compared them. Epidermal blisters were raised from fresh human skin ex vivo at 38-40 oC, with suction of 380-510 mm Hg. In Strategy-1, a 1 cm blister was micro-meshed into ~500 pieces, transferred to elastic adhesive dressing, then pneumatically expanded to ~9x the original blister area. Strategy-2: a 25 cm2 array of 100 small blisters was raised, simultaneously harvested and captured directly onto an adhesive dressing. The pneumatic expansion limit, release of micro-blisters upon hydration of the dressing adhesive, light microscopy, epidermal cell viability and DOPA positive melanocyte presence in blisters were measured. Both strategies yielded viable fractional epidermal micro-blister arrays, carried on a dressing for transfer to graft-recipient sites. The micro-blisters were gradually released upon hydration of the dressing adhesive. Strategy-2 has major advantages; only small blisters are made at the donor site, skillful dissection and physical expansion are not required and the strategy can be scaled to create large area grafts. Strategy-2 is practical for fractional epidermal micro-grafting and has recently been commercialized.
Email: MPURSCHKE@mgh.harvard.edu