Free Skin Grafting Today and Tomorrow

Abstract

I have been interested in the history of free skin grafting for many years and have spoken and written about it on many occasions yet Dr. Klasen has unearthed much material about which I was unaware. His thesis does not make a completely coherent story in which one discovery logically leads on to the next but it illustrates how a volume of knowledge grew and was absorbed into surgical thought and led to our present appreciation of the art and science of free grafting. It is still partly an “art”, which is just another way of saying that we are ignorant of some of the precise scientific facts underlying free skin grafting. With experience one obtaines better takes but becomes more and more aware of the miraculous biological phenomenon which makes free skin grafting possible. The take of a free graft would seem to have no survival property to develop in the course of evolution and yet it takes place and makes modern plastic and reconstructive surgery possible.