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They are often used in treatment or rehabilitation of people with:

• Extensive wounds
• Burns
• Areas of prior infection with extensive skin loss

They are sometimes also employed for cosmetic reasons.

Skin grafts are often employed after serious injuries when some of the body’s skin is damaged. Surgical removal (excision or debridement) of the damaged skin followed by skin grafting. The grafting serves two purposes: it can reduce the course of treatment needed (and time in the hospital), and it can improve the function and appearance of the area of the body which receives the skin graft.

The best skin grafts come from the patient’s own skin (donor sites on other parts of the body). These “autografts” usually come from areas that are not ordinarily visible. Sometime grafts are taken from other people, and indeed skin banks have been set up in some areas to store skin from cadavers.

Cultured epithelial autograft procedures take skin cells from the patient to grow new skin cells in sheets in a laboratory. The new sheets are used as grafts, and because the original skin cells came from the patient, the body does not reject them.