Skin Grafting in a Dog

Sally is a one-year-old Border Collie who managed to sneak out of an open garden and onto the road.  She was hit by a car and was extremely lucky that she was not severely injured or even killed.  Her main injury was a large wound at the bottom of one of her back legs which extended around the full circumference of the limb.  After several weeks of cleaning and dressing the wound it became obvious that it was too extensive even for a young healthy dog like Sally to heal without help.  We decided to perform a skin grafting procedure in order to speed matters up.

Sally was anaesthetised and the open wound meticulously cleaned and prepared surgically for the grafting process.  Special dressings were applied to the wound and Sally allowed to recover from anaesthesia.  Two days later (once bleeding from the wound had subsided) Sally was re-anaesthetised and an area on her chest wall carefully prepared for surgery.  A skin graft was harvested from the area using a scalpel and surgical forceps.  The graft is handled extremely gently in order not to damage the tissue and lots of tiny holes are made in it to improve its flexibility.  The site of graft harvesting was sutured closed and the graft stiched carefully to the leg wound.  It is important to orientate the graft so that when the hair starts to grow it grows in the same direction as the rest of the hair on the leg!  

The limb had to be splinted for 2-3 weeks after surgery to prevent movement of the site and the stitches were removed at 2 weeks.

Sally made a full recovery although the hair on the graft site grows faster than elsewhere on the leg, so her owner has to cut it regularly!!

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