Early, Aggressive Excisional Debridement: When to Start and When to Stop

With severe burns, surgeons must act quickly to assess the severity of the wound in order to plan an optimal treatment strategy, including the timing of the initial and subsequent excisions.

We recently brought together surgeons from around the country to discuss how they manage early surgical excision, a critical and complex aspect of wound care and reconstruction.

Participating surgeons include:

• • Derek Bell: Director of the Kessler Burn Center at University of Rochester Medical Center
  • Philip Fidler: Director of Education for Burn and Reconstructive Centers of America
  • Brett Hartman: Medical Director of Richard M. Fairbanks Burn Center at Eskenazi Health
  • Nicole Kopari: Pediatric Burn Medical Director at Children’s Hospital New Orleans

Read the below brief to hear from four surgeons on their specific decision tree and protocols for excising a wound 24 to 72 hours post-injury.

Please note: The opinions expressed, and techniques described, herein are general in nature and based on the clinical experience of the presenting physician. Physicians should use their own professional judgment and consider patient-specific factors in treating their own patients.

Disclosures: Dr. Kopari is a paid consultant of Integra LifeSciences. None of the quoted physician have been compensated for their participation on this project.