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Skin Grafts

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The main reason that skin grafts are conducted is to prevent infection from growing and spreading throughout the body. In reality, skin grafts increase the patient’s possibility of acquiring an infection. The procedure takes a large area of skin from one side of the body, and creates another open wound. As a result of this surgery, the patient has two wound sites, which makes him twice as likely to get an infection. Moreover, the body is put under a tremendous amount of stress because it is trying to attach new tissue to the surviving tissue at two completely different sites. This causes the healing process to progress slowly because two wounds require more energy than one. Traditional skin grafts are also a disadvantage to burn victims with substantial burns covering the majority of the body. In this situation, there are limited areas of unburned skin that can be transplanted to the compromised areas.
The most prevalent characteristic associated with skin grafts are gigantic scars that extend over the length of the wounded area. Scars emerge “as a result of the physiologic wound-healing process and may arise following any insult to the deep dermis” (Gauglitz, 2014, p. 32). When …show more content…

There are three stages that must ensue for an open area of skin to heal: inflammation, proliferation, and remodeling. Inflammation occurs at the wound site after the skin’s surface is broken. During this phase, “platelet degranulation and activation of the complement and clotting cascades form a fibrin clot for hemostasis, which acts as a scaffold for wound repair” (Gauglitz, 2014, p. 32). Platelet degranulation is crucial to healing because this process recruits immune cells to attack pathogens and new epithelial cells to reconstruct the skin

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