Oxford: Doctors have developed a new method of treating severe burns using a paste made from thin pieces of patients’ skin.
In this procedure, a small but healthy piece of skin is taken from the thigh and finely chopped, mixed with a gel and the paste-like mixture is applied to the wounds.
According to the results, each small piece can grow up to 500 times its actual size, which means that a very small amount of healthy skin will be needed for grafting using this method.
Experts say that by using the skin paste, patients will be able to avoid the painful process of large skin grafting with permanent scars left on the body.
Dr Ream Mistry, a plastic surgery specialist from the University of Oxford, said that skin removal can be extremely painful for the patient.
Around 1,000 British burn victims undergo skin grafts each year, and a quarter of these are children. In this procedure, a piece of healthy skin is taken and spread over the burned area and attached with stitches or glue.
For large burns, large pieces of skin are taken and anesthesia is usually used to obtain them.
Skin is usually removed from the back of the thigh for this procedure and the scar can be permanent.
But some experts believe that the skin paste technique can eliminate the procedure.
In the experiment, a piece of skin was cut to the size of one-third of a millimeter and mixed with a water-based gel to hold the cells before placing them on the burned areas.
The areas to which this paste was applied began to heal within the same time as the normal grafting period.
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