What precautions should one take after skin grafting procedures? - Dr. Surindher D S A

Skin grafting is what most of the people understand of plastic surgery. It basically involves taking skin from another area in the body and putting in another area of the body. This usually involves when you need to cover wounds. The wounds could be because of an injury, accident, burns, other reasons like diabetes, where you have a non-healing wound. Once you have a wound, you have to cover it with skin. So you have to take skin from another area of the body to cover the raw area once the skin sticks there, it gives a normal biological cover to the wound. Once the skin graft is put, you have to take care of the area, why because the skin graft that you gave put does not have all the layers of a normal skin. A split thickness skin graft has only the epidermis and only a part of the dermal layer. So it is thinner layer of skin, so you have to take care of it. Because the skin graft is stuck on to that area, it is not going to be as string and as the normal skin surrounding it. So you have to make sure that you do not get injured on that area. You have to use moisturizers on that area to keep your skin soft and keep the skin graft supple. Since the skin graft does not have appendages for oil secretion, the skin will always be rough. So moisturizing and protecting the skin are the 2 important things that you have to do once the skin graft is done. So this has to be continued for the next 6 – 8 months or lifelong depending on the area. Safety and preventing it from injury is lifelong. Moisturizing it depends on the area and you have to do it for 6 – 8 months to about a year.