title: Development of a device for measuring adherence of skin grafts to the wound surface.
abstract: Adherence of a biological graft to the wound surface is the most important factor influencing the ultimate success of graft viability. A machine has been developed to test the adherence of biological graft materials to a substrate such as a wound surface. The peeling mode, which yields reproducible quantitative measurements of adherence, is a standard method for testing adhesives. The device is designed to continuously measure the force required to peel the graft from the substrate at a constant rate. This force is a function of the energy of adhesion per unit area of adhered surface. This device has been used to measure the peeling force of (2 x 2 cm) skin grafts which are applied to full-thickness wounds on mice. Results of tests on adherence of autografts on mice show that the peeling force increases significantly with time over the first 9 days of healing. Thus, this device is useful in quantitative comparison of various skin grafting techniques and artificial grafts.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Mechanics and Engineering Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093-0412.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mead
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Skalak
authors.forename: Y C
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Fung
authors.forename: J C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Debes
authors.forename: R L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Zapata-Sirvent
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Andree
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Greenleaf
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cooper
authors.forename: J F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Hansbrough
mesh_terms: D000268:Adhesiveness; D000818:Animals; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008422:Materials Testing / Q000295:instrumentation*; D051379:Mice; D016038:Skin Transplantation / Q000592:standards*; D013997:Time Factors; D014945:Wound Healing; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000628:therapy*