Novel Autologous Graft Harvesting System Reduces Pain and Cost to Manage Donor Site

Problem: The Whitehouse recently published a document titled the Underestimated cost of the Opioid Crisis which exams the economic cost of the current crisis in the United States of America. One of the reported ways that people first come into contact with Opioid is during a health event whereby they are prescribed opioid for pain management following a medical procedure. Or opioid might be used for anesthesia during surgery.

Purpose: A full-thickness skin graft (FTSG) often done under anesthesia and often results in a painful donor site. At the Innovations in Wound Healing conference in 2017 and 2018 posters have been presented regarding the use of a novel harvesting system that requires local anesthesia only and reports minimal to no donor site pain during recovery nor the procedure.
    
Method: The dressing used in both posters reported a transparent film dressing or non-adherent, absorbent dressings. The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) data reveals that over one hundred thousand skin grafts were performed in 2014 in the hospital outpatient setting. A simple search was done to determine the cost to the average patient for popular dressings used for skin graft donor sites. 

Results: Cost of dressings ranged from $1.44 to $8.99 for the donor site with a transparent film being the most cost effective and appears to provide good outcomes for donor site healing. Patients reported donor sites as painless  with a high score of 1.3 on day 1 and .6 on day two.

Conclusion: Looking at the complications associated with donor sites from autologous skin grafting and the potential for opioid addiction, use of this novel harvesting system to access the gold standard for wound closure without donor site pain or morbidity while reducing donor site dressing cost offers an alternative worthy of consideration.