Considerazioni ed attualità sull'espansione cutanea

Considerations on skin expansion. The Authors present their experience with the skin-expansion technique. They indicate how it is useful to adopt this techique not only for the diseases more often recorded in literature but also in other pathologies. They indicate the criteria used to choose the best fitting skin expander for each patient, according with the characteristic of the different kind of devices and the different shape, size and anatomica! place of the lesions. They also show how they manage the frequency of expansions on the basis of the experimental studies they have performed on techniques of cutaneous tonometry, of transcutaneous oximetry and capnometry. Then, it is considered the surgical plan of the flap, and the problems correlated with the formation of a capsule around the expander are discussed, considering whenever is better to remove it or to leave it in place. Finally the Authors evaluate the_històlogical reports on the expanded compared with normal skin, studied with traditional and electronic microscopy