Efficacy of Stamp Skin Grafting to Promote the Healing Process of Chronic Wounds

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the clinical efficacy of stamp skin grafting in promoting wound healing for patients with chronic wounds.

Methods: This study enrolled 86 patients with chronic wounds from a wound care clinic between November 2022 and December 2023. The participants were randomly allocated into the control (n = 44) and skin-grafting (n = 42) groups using a preset random number table. The control group received conventional wet dressing care, whereas the skin-grafting group underwent additional stamp skin-grafting care.

Results: The skin-grafting group demonstrated significantly reduced wound healing time, improved healing efficacy, decreased dressing change frequency, and lowered dressing change costs compared with the control group (all P s < .05). During the nursing process, the skin-grafting group exhibited significantly lower pretreatment Numeric Rating Scale scores when the fourth and fifth dressings were changed and during-treatment Visual Analog Scale scores from the third to fifth dressing changes compared with the control group (all P s < .05). After adjusting for confounding factors, wound area served as an independent risk factor for both healing time ( rpartial = 0.457, P < .05) and healing efficacy ( β = -0.559, P < .05) in the skin-grafting group, whereas patient adherence to wound care served as an independent risk factor for both healing time ( rpartial = 0.333, P < .05) and healing efficacy ( β = 1.194, P < .05) in the control group, as well as for healing efficacy ( β = 1.318, P < .05) in the skin-grafting group.

Conclusions: Stamp skin grafting effectively promotes the rapid recovery of chronic wounds with reduced medical burden and patient pain. The effectiveness primarily depends on the wound area and patient adherence.

Keywords: chronic wound; efficacy; healing; stamp grafts.

FIGURE 1

TYPICAL WOUND HEALING PROCESS AFTER STAMP SKIN GRAFTING A, Implanted mode of tiny skin grafts in stamp skin grafting. B, Survival of tiny skin grafts and its crawling healing. C, Skin-island generation. D, Wound repair. E, Stamp skin-grafting situation. F, Possibly unsurvivable skin graft. G, Unsurvivable skin graft. H, Typical skin-island formation.

FIGURE 2

TRENDS IN PAIN SCORES BEFORE AND DURING THE FIRST FIVE TREATMENTS IN THE TWO GROUPS T1-0 to T5-0 represents before the previous five dressing changes, respectively; T1-0 to T5-0 represents during the previous five dressing changes, respectively. The results showed a lower pretreatment pain score at the fourth and fifth dressing changes in the skin-grafting group, as well as during treatment at the third, fourth, and fifth dressing changes. *P < .05.

FIGURE 3

PEARSON CORRELATION BETWEEN HEALING TIME AND WOUND AREA WITHIN THE TWO GROUPS The solid and dotted lines represent the correlation coefficients and their 95% CIs, respectively. The distribution density heatmap illustrates the data distribution density of all cases, which gradually decreases from red to orange, then to green, cyan, and finally white.