The use of autologous epidermal grafts for diabetic foot ulcer emergencies: A clinical study

Abstract

BACKGROUND: There are various surgical and invasive treatment systems such as conservative skin grafts and autologous epider- mal grafting (AEG) for diabetic foot ulcers. This study aims to evaluate the feasibility of using a novel epidermal graft harvesting system in diabetic foot ulcer emergencies. METHODS: A retrospective clinical study was conducted with 15 diabetic foot ulcer patients, and after written and signed consent forms were taken, AEG system was applied to all patients. All of the clinical data of the patients such as their American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) Physical Status Classification System scores, size of pre-application wound area (cm 2), time to complete re-epithelization of the wound, pain scores using the visual analog scale (VAS) for both donor and recipient sites, changes in size of wound, complete dermal response time, and patients’ demographics, comorbidities were recorded. The age, gender, pre-post appli- cation wound area (cm2), time of healing, ASA, and VAS variables were compared each other and analyzed statistically. P