Now, you can measure how much skin can be stretched
Posted on: 26/Sep/2016 10:25:47 AM
Researchers from the Binghamton University in the US have developed a novel method that measures the limit to which human skin can be stretched, an advance that could help grow new skin for burn victims.
Speaking about this, they said, Surgeons use a variety of techniques to grow skin for tissue expansion procedures designed to grow skin in one region of the body so that it can be auto-grafted on to another site. This procedure stretches the skin, typically, by inflating a balloon with air or silicone under the surface.
Skin grows more in regions where it is stretched - during pregnancy, for instance - but stretch it too much and the tissue might break. Most people think skin is smooth and flat just like a Photoshopped advertisement. It is not. If you look at the back of your hand, skin has small triangular patterns on it. These shapes are caused by small canyons in the skin. Those canyons act just like notebook perforations when you tear a page out; they are weak points. We wanted to see how these topographical features acted as weak points of the skin.
