Peculiarities of Early Surgical Treatment of Patients With Deep Burns Using Biological Dressings

Abstract

Background: Early necrosectomy with immediate or delayed skin grafting is the gold standard in treatment of burn injuries. Despite all advances in active surgical treatment of burn patients, the optimal time of necrosectomy as well as methods and timing of skin grafting remain the subject of debate among burn surgeons. Reliability and practicality of methods to determine the viability of affected skin tissues act as a limiting factor to advances in surgical strategies for early treatment of burn injuries.Objective: To improve methods of early surgical treatment of patients with deep burns using biological dressings.Materials and methods: Our study analyzed treatment outcomes of 34 patients (age, 18 to 60 years) diagnosed with third-degree burn wounds of different localizations involving 5%-20% of body surface area (according to ICD-10). Group 1 included 18 (53%) patients who underwent skin grafting right after surgical removal of necroses; biological dressings (Chitopran) were applied. Group 2 comprised 16 (47%) patients who also underwent early surgical treatment (autografting), but autografts were covered with synthetic dressings (Voskopran).Results: We found that in group 1 the average time to engraftment after skin grafting followed by Chitopran application was 5.0 (5.0-6.0) days. In group 2, the average time to engraftment after skin grafting followed by Voskopran application was 6.0 (6.0-6.3) days. The statistical data demonstrated that biological dressings had an advantage over synthetic ones in terms of time to engraftment.Conclusions: We can conclude that biological dressings have an advantage over synthetic ones in surgical treatment of partial thickness and deep burn wounds.

Keywords

• skin grafting
• autograft
• biological dressings