ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Management of full thickness and deep dermal partial thickness burns usually involves debridment with split skin grafting. Debridement involves removal of devitalized, necrotic tissue from a wound in order to promote healing and prevent infection. Debridement is also vital to obtain a vascularized wound bed to accept the skin graft. Ideally, debridement will only remove dead tissue (eschar) with preservation of all living tissues. Theoretically the more dermis one can preserve the less the resulting scarring will be. This chapter will explore this hypothesis and the different techniques available to achieve optimum results.
