Minced Skin Grafting for Promoting Wound Healing and Improving Donor-Site Appearance after Split-Thickness Skin Grafting: A Prospective Half-Side Comparative Trial

BACKGROUND: Minced skin grafting is a procedure that involves mincing of the harvested skin and grafting it back onto the wounds. The authors aimed to investigate whether minced skin grafting reduces the healing time and improves the sequential postoperative appearance of donor sites. METHODS: A single-center, two-treatment, half-side comparative study was performed. The split-thickness skin remaining after grafting was minced until pasty. The small pasty graft mass was uniformly spread on half of the entire donor site. Minced skin grafting was not performed on the other side. The data from 30 patients were used for analysis. RESULTS: The average time to complete healing of the donor sites in the minced skin grafting and control groups was 9.4 ± 2.5 and 12.4 ± 3.6 days, respectively. The difference in the healing time between the two groups was statistically significant (p < 0.001). Three blinded surgeons used a scale to grade photographs according to the degree of conspicuous donor sites in comparison with the normal skin around the donor sites. All observers reported that the differences in donor-site appearance between the minced skin grafting and control groups were statistically significant at postoperative months 1 and 2, and two observers reported that the differences in donor-site appearance were significant at months 4, 6, and 12. The differences in the number of patients with donor-site dyspigmentation between the minced skin grafting and control groups at 12 months were statistically significant (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: This prospective half-side comparative trial demonstrates that minced skin grafting promotes wound healing and improves donor-site appearance after split-thickness skin grafting. CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic, II.