Current Treatments for full-thickness wounds

Plastic surgeons use skin grafts where possible for best reconstructive outcomes, but main limitations are (i) skin transplanted from a donor site creates another wound, (ii) there is not enough donor site for large-area wounds. 

In fact, for wounds involving loss of anything more that 5% of the skin area, synthetic will be definitely required. Therefore synthetic scaffolds are required for challenging clinical situations (Brusselaers, 2010).

Several alternative types of artificial skin products have been developed for restoring lost skin but none have proved to be truly effective for full thickness skin-loss wounds (Harding, 2011).

Overall, most of these products function as temporary biological wound dressings, by supporting or stimulating wound healing, but result in degrees of scarring (Abdel-Sayed, 2019). The current dermal scaffold products are effective some clinical situations but not in others, and when they do work, the outcomes are also characterised by degrees of scarring (Brusselears, 2010).

PROMATRIX, a new approach.

The concept behind ProMatrix is to address the problems of skin regeneration with a new approach. Bio-intelligent scaffolds aim to provide the right biological material and the right architecture to organise and guide the body’s natural repair response, to result in regenerative type regrowth of lost tissue structure, rather than very dense, dis-organised and dysfunctional scar tissue.

References

  Brusselaers, N., A. Pirayesh, H. Hoeksema, C. D. Richters, J. Verbelen, H. Beele, S. I. Blot and S. Monstrey (2010). "Skin replacement in burn wounds." J Trauma 68(2): 490-501.

  Abdel-Sayed, P., N. Hirt-Burri, A. de Buys Roessingh, W. Raffoul and

L. A. Applegate (2019). "Evolution of Biological Bandages as First Cover for Burn Patients." Adv Wound Care (New