This story is from November 22, 2020

Lucknow: 10-minute plastic surgery with ‘artificial skin’ now at SGPGI

Patients requiring re-constructive surgery to cover a wound, burn or scarring remnants of cancer now have the option of getting ‘artificial skin’ without the hassles of skin transplants such as time taken and prognosis.
Lucknow: 10-minute plastic surgery with ‘artificial skin’ now at SGPGI
Representative image
LUCKNOW: Patients requiring re-constructive surgery to cover a wound, burn or scarring remnants of cancer now have the option of getting ‘artificial skin’ without the hassles of skin transplants such as time taken and prognosis.
The department of plastic surgery at SGPGI has successfully used artificial skin for the first time in the state for healing two patients this week.
According to experts, there are primarily two methods for covering a wound—grafting and the use of ‘flap’.
For both techniques, skin from an inconspicuous part of the body such as thigh is used.
“Many times, it so happens that the patient’s own skin cannot be used, such as in case of septicemia, skin disease, etc. Artificial skin known as dermal template is easily available in sheets which can be cut to size by a pair of scissors,” explained the head of SGPGI’s plastic surgery department Prof Rajiv Agarwal.
Of the two patients at the institute, one had a tumour of the cheek and another had sustained burn scars.
The technique which has been widely used in the US for over 15 years has been made available in the Indian market a few years ago.
“Skin grafting uses the epidermis and a small part of the dermis layer. After a period of time, this skin gets shrivelled and shrunken. For a flap, a thicker section of the skin containing both the epidermis, dermis and other layers is used. This takes around two hours to be done,” he added.

“But, artificial skin takes only 10 minutes to be transplanted. As it is made of fat naturally present in bovine, it substitutes for the dermis layer and after 21 days, a small grafting is done to provide the missing epidermis,” said Prof Agarwal.
Though costlier than the other two methods, an ease of re-constructive surgery comes with artificial skin, especially in the case of serious patients as very little time is taken for the process.
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