ABSTRACT
Although early excision and grafting has been considered a procedure of the late 20th century; it was actually first described by Lustgarten in 1891. The fire at the Cocoanut Grove Nightclub in Boston in November, 1942, brought new insight into many aspects of the care of burned patients. Cope suggested then that patients with early wound closure had improved survival [ I ]. Several reports are scattered throughout the literature over the next 30 years [2-4], but results were discouraging since they showed little clinical improvement from the usual practice of waiting for spontaneous eschar separation followed by grafting on granulation tissue. Janezekovic reported good results in 1970 with sequential shaving of burns of varying depths in [5]. The surgical community began to take notice; however, the need to estimate the depth of burn and ancillary support required for a major burn excision made acceptance of this technique difficult.
