Manufactured Skin Can Heal Wounds

Manufactured Skin Can Heal Wounds and doctors are healing wounds with manufactured skin or collagen graft.

The idea behind a collagen graft is to create a sort of scaffolding upon which a patient’s cells can attach and grow and heal.

Technology could help wounded soldiers, burn victims, diabetics, those with out immune systems and the elderly.

Manufactured Skin Can Heal Wounds and give doctors who specialize in wound management, the ability to grow skin to help people save their limbs and extremities.

Of course the ever money hungry pharmaceutical and biotech companies are extracting collagen, a protein that makes up 75 percent of skin, from donated skin and creating grafts, or patches, that can induce a patient’s own skin to grow.

The skin that they are grafting with can be donated skin from a variety of sources. Anything from a pig’s pancreas to a baby’s foreskin.

“In some cases, we can get four football fields of skin out of one baby foreskin. If taken care of, skin can grow and grow,” stated Dr. James McGuire, head of wound management at the Foot and Ankle Institute at the School of Podiatric Medicine at Temple University, in Philadelphia, PA.

With most people and cases, a scrape or cut mends itself or can be helped along with a Band-Aid and some antibiotic cream. Our skin is designed to repair itself. Yet in the case of large or deep wounds, burns, diabetics, large wounds, bad immune systems and the elderly, the skin doesn’t heal because it has become so infected, or doesn’t have the ability to heal and the skin or wound can even become gangrenous and can not grow new cells.

The idea behind these new manufactured skins or collagen grafts is to create a sort of scaffolding into the wound, upon which a patients cells can attach and grow.

Here is what Dr. McGuire stated “Manufactured Skin Can Heal Wounds.”

“Once you take all the cells out of there and strip it down to the collagen level, the body says, ‘This is great; this is what we make our bodies out of…and tissues will grow around it.”

“Although these collagen patches can be used to treat the wounds of soldiers and burn patients, they are more commonly prescribed for people who suffer from peripheral artery disease, pressure ulcers and diabetes.”

“The patient can’t feel anything, so when they step on a tack or get a blister or a penetrating wound to the skin, it just gets infected and keeps festering. And a lot of elderly [people] who are bedridden in nursing homes develop these horrible bed sores. These patches can help them,” stated Dr. James McGuire.

The patches come from different sources and can contain additional ingredients.

Some patches are created from animal organs, such as cow intestines, and even from the skin of some reptiles. A New Zealand company has developed a patch that contains honey, which is a natural antiseptic. Other patches contain elements such as silver, which has been shown in studies to be an excellent antibacterial agent.

When I have to go to the hospital for my Lupus rash, they apply silver patches to my skin to get it to heal and it is amazing what it can do, for me. But, they are very costly.

Whether some one needs a patch from a bovine or a boa is determined by the injury and the person receiving the patch. Depending on its origin, a graft can differ in size, thickness and how fast it generates tissue.

“Although Manufactured Skin Can Heal Wounds, it really depends on the wound itself as to which patch you should use. How much is it infected, how long it’s been infected, what the infection is, that sort of thing,” continued Dr. James McGuire.

For the full story of “Manufactured Skin Can Heal Wounds,” go to CNN News. Take care of your skin and your wounds, Baby Boomers.