Skin Grafting - Skin Treatment using Skin Grafting Instrument

Homologous Thin Thiersch grafts in vitiligo. This procedure is recommended to give normal pigmentary effect to resistant patches in properly screened quiescent cases of vitiligo. Surgery is done under local/general anesthesia. The recipient site is abraded with a diamond brush to produce uniformly abraded area.

After the bleeding has been controlled, Thiersch's graft from the matched donor site is removed with a dermatome or a blade and applied to the recipient area. Part is sealed with collodion. Pressure bandage is given. Windows are made in the collodion seal after 48 hours.

Bandage is removed after 2-3 days and collodion is removed with acetone after 7-12 days. By this time, graft has taken in nicely. The margins take a couple of weeks to smoothen out. The colour takes 4-8 weeks to match. The donor site is normal or slightly discolored on healing; occasionally there is hypertrophic scarring particularly when the graft has been deeper.

Recipient sites may have a peripheral depigmented fringe if the graft has been smaller than the recipient site. At one sitting, upto 40-50 square inches can be grafted. A slightly modified technique has also been successfully tried on the lips (Behl andAzad).

Behl (1962, 1964, 1974 and 1988) has reported excellent and gratifying results in over 3000 patients treated in the last 30 years.

It gives a new lease of happy life to patients suffering from vitiligo, leucoderma following bum, filling defects etc.