Skin grafts

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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Jill wrote: <<Another new technique involves growing skin tissue from cells taken from circumcised infant foreskins. (This answers a question sent in by another sagacious member of the Teeming Millions: “What do they do with those after they cut them off?”) The tissue generated then serves as a temporary covering for burn patients or sometimes as a permanent graft for treatment of skin ulcers. >>

I knew a young man who had had this treatment for a missing eyelid (he was born with it; they used his own foreskin as a graft source). He grew up quite normal, except for being a little cock-eyed.

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PStamler, you should know that the devil reserves a special place in hell for people who make such awful puns* …

  • awful pun = a good pun that I didn’t think of
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The mailbag item being referenced is When they do skin grafts, what if they don’t have enough skin? (02-Jun-2000)

It was written by SDSTAFF Member Jill. Hi Jill!

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Quoting Jill: “Permanent grafts: you don’t want to see the pictures of how they do this. Think vegetable peeler or cheese parer…”

I’ve watched this being done a few times (There has got to be a “Doug” in every neighborhood!) and there was nothing tentative or dainty in the doctors’ handling of the proceedure. Once they had the “grafts” they ran them over with something like pizza cutter with teeth so the graft could be stretched (like cutting steak into minute steak but lots thinner) to cover more area.

Gross but interesting!