A skin graft is a surgical procedure in which a piece of skin is transplanted from one area to another. Often skin will be taken from unaffected areas on the injured person and used to cover a defect, often a burn. If the area of the skin defect is especially large, the harvested skin may be meshed to stretch it into a larger patch. If the defect involves a great loss of tissue, a full thickness graft, a flap of skin with underlying muscle and blood vessels, may be required. Taking the graft from the injured person makes rejection of the tissue unlikely. MedlinePlus.com

The traditional method used by hospitals these days when they get in a burns victim, is skin graft. A skin graft is a patch of skin that is removed by surgery from one area of the body and transplanted, or attached, to another area. This process takes around three weeks, and waiting 3 weeks might be too long for patients who are vulnerable to infections.

New breakthrough in stem cell research allowed French scientists to create human skin rapidly from stem cells, which could save thousands of lives of many burns victims.

Marc Peschanski, the research director at the institute I-Stem, said ” What our findings can provide is a way to cover the burns during those three weeks with skin epidermis … produced in that factory and sent to the physician at the moment they receive a severely burned patient”

The experiment was done on mice and showed a promising “quick” treatment for burns patients.

Via – Reuters