• N S Solanki, I P Mackie, and J E Greenwood.
• Adult Burn Centre, Royal Adelaide Hospital, North Terrace, Adelaide 5000, SA, Australia.
• Burns. 2012 Sep 1;38(6):889-98.

ObjectiveTo assess patient comfort and wound-healing efficacy of a new, purpose-designed biosynthetic material (AWBAT-D™) in the healing of split-skin graft donor sites in comparison with our standard dressing, Duoderm(®).Materials And MethodsWe conducted a prospective randomised controlled trial of donor site dressings, comparing AWBAT-D™ with our standard dressing, Duoderm(®). Patients were randomly allocated to have their donor site dressed with one of these materials. Outcome measures included pain scores at rest and during dressing changes, time to re-epithelialisation, time to discharge, scarring and infection. Results were assessed for significance using the Mann-Whitney U-test (non-parametric data) and the Chi-Square test (parametric data).ResultsFourteen patients were recruited with 8 donor sites in each group. The mean pain scores at rest and during dressing changes were not found to be significantly different between the two groups (P=0.99 and P=0.90 respectively). The median time to re-epithelialisation was shorter in the Duoderm(®) group at 11 days compared to 17 days in the AWBAT-D™ group (P=0.007). The median time to discharge was not significantly different (P=0.38). No infection or scarring has been observed.ConclusionsBased on these early results, AWBAT-D™ appears to have slower donor site healing and does not provide significant improvements in postoperative pain or discharge time compared to Duoderm(®). There is no evidence at this stage that our standard donor site dressing should be changed.Crown Copyright © 2012. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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