Non-cultured Autologous Keratinocyte Suspension Versus Traditional Split Skin Graft for Burn Wounds Treatment

Burn injuries are complicated wounds to manage with a relative high mortality rate in especially large area burns and elderly patients.

Substantial tissue damage and extensive fluid loss can cause impaired vital functions of the skin. When healing is delayed, the potential short term common complications include wound infection affecting the local healing process or systemic inflammatory and immunological responses which subsequently can cause life threatening sepsis and multi-organ failure.

Fortunately, survival rates have improved drastically over the last century due to advancements in burn care such as early surgical intervention, critical care support and wound care.

For many years the "gold standard" for treating wounds of burn patients has been transplantation with an autologous split skin graft. In patients with extensive burn wounds donor sites may be limited. In order to cover all the wounds, the patients often need multiple operations and/or the skin had to be expanded as much as possible.

However, the current different expansion techniques and treatments [mesh and Meek-Wall] frequently lead to scar formation, especially in the large mesh inter-sites.

The rate of wound closure depends on how quickly epidermal cells migrate out of the meshed auto graft and/ or wound edges to close the wound. Accelerating re-epithelialization could potentially improve the outcome of the healing process in terms of reducing granulation tissue formation, reducing the healing time, and thereby reducing the risk of colonization and infection, as well as scar formation.

Since clinical cases were first successfully treated with cultured epithelial layers, keratinocyte sheets have become an important tool in burn wound treatment. However, the clinical application can be limited by long culture time and fragility of the keratinocyte sheets. There is, therefore, a clinical demand for other options to cover large areas of burn wounds in the absence of viable donor sites.

A novel concept consists of treating wounds with epithelial cell suspensions. In 1998, Fraulin et al. developed a method of spreading cell suspension on to wounds using an aerosol spray in a porcine model.

The use of non-cultured keratinocyte suspensions was first reported by Hunyadi et al., showing that a group of patients with burn wounds or chronic leg ulcers, treated with a fibrin matrix containing keratinocytes, healed completely, as opposed to the control group.

In porcine wound models, non-cultured keratinocyte suspensions have been shown to accelerate wound healing, improve quality of epithelialization, and restore melanocyte population, compared to the respective control group.

Major advantages in the use of non-cultured cell suspensions are a drastic reduction of preparation time and possibly easier handling compared to keratinocyte sheets. Particularly, scar quality may be improved by enhancing the speed of epithelialization and fading of mesh patterns in split skin grafts.

In this study, we will compare the results of treating both deep dermal burn wound -following early excision- and post-burn raw area using non-cultured autologous keratinocyte suspension and traditional split skin graft.