Comparison of Early versus Late Exposure Methods of Dressing in the Healing of Split-Thickness Skin Graft Donor Sites in a Tertiary Hospital, Southeast, Nigeria.

Abstract

Background: Split-thickness skin grafting (STSG) is a veritable reconstructive option for covering skin and soft tissue defects but donor site management remains a challenge. Attempts to improve STSG donor site care have been made using different methods and various dressing agents; however, there is no consensus on the standard method of donor site care.

Aim: This study aims to compare STSG healing rate using early versus late exposure of donor site dressing methods.

Methods: This study was conducted in Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, Southeast, Nigeria. Forty patients were recruited for the study and assigned to two groups of 20 patients each by a simple random sampling method. Group A had late exposure of the donor site dressing, whereas Group B had early exposure of the donor site dressing. The percentage re-epithelialization rate on the 14th day and the duration for complete re-epithelialization for both groups were calculated. The results were analyzed using International Business Machine Corporation, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, Chicago Illinois, USA. (IBM SPSS) Statistics for Windows version 26.

Results: The early exposure dressing method showed a faster re-epithelialization rate with a mean value of 98.15 (±4.92) compared with late exposure dressing methods with a mean rate of 70.95 (±13.22), which was statistically significant with a P value of 0.001. The duration for complete re-epithelialization was 13.80 (±4.63) days for the early exposure method and 29.40 (±6.25) days for the late exposure method. This is statistically significant with P < 0.001.

Conclusion: Management of STSG donor site by early exposure of the donor site dressing is associated with increased re-epithelialization rate and shortened duration for complete donor site healing.