Local doctors: TheraSkin is a promising option for hard-to-heal wounds

Local wound care centers have a new weapon in their arsenals to treat people with chronic, hard-to-heal wounds.

TheraSkin is product made of cryopreserved grafts from donated human skin that promotes wound healing.

“When you fill out the donor slip and donate organs, the skin is usually part of it. It’s an organ, a very important organ,” said Dr. William C. Tompkins, surgeon and medical director for the Wound Care Center at CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System. “Our skin has wound healing properties. It’s the only reason wounds heal … because of properties in the skin. … All human skin has these growth factors that facilitate wound healing.”

TheraSkin is treated, sterilized and cryopreserved. It comes to clinics frozen from the manufacturer, Soluble Solutions.

“It can be used with any kind of chronic, hard-to-heal wound including venous ulcers, diabetic foot ulcers or post-operative wounds,” said Dr. Rob Klein, a podiatrist at Collom & Carney Clinic and attending physician at Wadley Regional Medical Center’s Wound Healing and Hyperbarics Center.

TheraSkin is an improvement from other treatments in several ways. It can be ordered in different sizes. It’s easy to preserve because it’s frozen and has a longer shelf life than some other products on the market. It’s also more effective than wound-treatment products made of collagen alone.

“There are a variety of other skin substitutes basically made from collagen, and they don’t have the growth factors in them that TheraSkin does,” Klein said. “I also like the cryopreserved products, because they can stay in the freezer, and when you need them, they’re ready.”

Success of the TheraSkin graft depends on several factors including control of diabetes and good circulation, but doctors are encouraged by the results they’ve seen so far.

“I’ve used a lot of products in the past, and nothing has been as good as this is going to be,” Tompkins said. “TheraSkin is the best for facilitating helping these wounds heal. … It’s not perfect. It doesn’t heal all wounds. In the literature, it says it heals 60 to 70 percent of wounds it’s used on.”

Klein was impressed by the results of one of the first patients he used TheraSkin on.

“He was a diabetic patient who’d stepped on a nail. It went deep, and he ended up with a 6-inch wound on the bottom of his foot that extended to the joint. I cleaned the wound in the clinic, and when it was healthy enough, I applied TheraSkin. In two weeks, the wound was completely closed. … He was a very motivated patient, still gainfully employed, and his primary focus was just to get back to work. Having a product like this where you can get someone healed and back to work quickly is just huge,” Klein said.

Wound healing is extremely important.

“When you have a chronic wound or deep, complex open wound, getting the wound to heal quickly is very important, because the wound can extend. You can wind up getting a bone infection. It can get colonized with bacteria. … A somewhat simple or complex wound can be catastrophic. They can lose a foot or leg if you don’t get the wound to heal quickly,” Klein said. “Diabetic foot disease is very serious. If a diabetic patient develops and ulcer, they’re at extreme risk for loss of a foot or a limb. Within five years, if they lose one limb, they’re at risk of losing the other, and within five years of that, they’re typically dead,” Klein said

The cost is comparable to other treatments, and less in some cases.

“It’s really moderately priced,” Tompkins said.

Theraskin comes from human donors, so physicians don’t know what color of skin they’re going to receive when they order it.

“I think it’s an interesting thing, but if the TheraSkin is a different color than the patient’s skin, it doesn’t change the color of their skin. The graft dries up like a scab, and the patient’s own skin color regenerates,” Klein said.