Skin Graft Substitute

Lee Health Wound Care Surgeon Dr. William Kokal treats burns regularly. In the past, that would mean putting on a new dressing every day. “And if you do that, it’s inconvenient and can be painful if you have a burn.” Now he can treat many burns using a skin graft substitute. “It’s an animal product that we can put on these wounds. What’s the advantage? The animal products have a lot of properties that accelerate healing.”

The skin graft substitute is sutured onto the skin, but once it’s on, you can set it and forget it until it heals. “It increases signaling proteins, things that help accelerate healing. It decreases inflammation which helps healing, by decreasing degradation of tissue it increases healing,” said Dr. Kokal. He said that he has treated a patient’s burn with both the traditional method and the skin graft substitute and the results speak for themselves. “2/3 if the wounds we did one way with the biologic, 1/3 we did the standard treatment. Two different antibiotics with a non-adherence dressing. We brought the patient back for further treatment. All the places we put the biologic on healed, all the places we put the ‘standard treatment’ still were opened.”

Helping patients get back to doing what they love sooner. “By being more aggressive, cleaning the wound, putting this biologic, sometime we have the wounds healed in 7-10 days rather than weeks,” said Dr. Kokal.



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Lee Health in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of health care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For more than 100 years, we’ve been providing our community with personalized preventative health services and primary care to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries. Lee Health - Caring People. Inspiring Care.


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