Abstract
Introduction: Current medical knowledge has provided us with a wide range of possibilities of treating chronic wounds. Over the recent decades, in particular, significant progress has been made in this field.
The authors present an overview of current knowledge of chronic wound healing, pointing out the surgeon's role in the process of chronic wound management. Using surgical therapy, we are able to heal a chronic wound in a shorter period of time, particularly if the treatment is accelerated by the application of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) as a source of growth factors.
Methods: The pilot randomized prospective study included four patients with chronic wounds of the lower leg after previous failure of conservative therapy who were indicated for skin transplantation. Following previous vacuum-assisted closure therapy, the patients undergoing skin transplantation were prospectively randomized into two groups.
Autologous PRP was used in one of the groups and standard skin transplantation without PRP was performed in the other one. Results: In the PRP group, 99% of the wound areas were healed on the 15th day after the operation.
In the other group, 90% of the areas were healed on the 15th day following the operation. In the PRP group, complete healing of the defect occurred in both patients at 15 and 20 days post-surgery.
In the second group, one patient completely healed within 28 days; the other one was not fully healed even at 3 months post-surgery. Conclusions: Most patient groups at great risk may benefit from the method using PRP, as well as patients with chronic wounds who have failed conventional methods available for both general and local therapy.
This fact has been confirmed by the authors' initial experience presented.