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Page 8 of 13 Wilson et al. Plast Aesthet Res. 2025;12:8 https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2347-9264.2024.135
[12]
Munasinghe et al. 2016 Case series Burns & Trauma 11 Adult 20%-85% / Mean % graft take
[33]
Menon et al. 2013 Case series Burns 7 Pediatric 30%-70% / Mean number of surgical
procedures
[18]
Danks and Lairet 2010 Case report Journal of Burn 1 Adult 54% / Length of stay
Care and
Research
[19]
Lumenta et al. 2009 Case series Journal of Burn 10 Adult > 60% / Time to heal
Care and
Research
[17]
Hsieh et al. 2008 Case series Burns 37 Adult 40%-97% / % viability at POD 10
[13]
Papp and Härmä 2003 Case series Burns 3 Both 76%-92% / % re-epithelialization at 4 weeks
post op
[11]
Lari and Gang 2001 Case series Burns 7 Both 50%-85% / % Graft take at POD7
[16]
Zermani et al. 1997 Retrospective Burns 5 Both Average / % graft in situ POD6
cohort study 35.6%
[10]
Kreis et al. 1993 Case series Burns 10 Both 43%-83% / Mean % take at one week
BTM: Biodegradable temporising matrix; CEA: cultured epithelial allografts; TBSA: total body surface area; SSG/STSG: split thickness skin graft; POD: post operative day; PNI: prognostic nutrition index.
micrografting, allowing both tasks to be completed concurrently and improving overall efficiency.
Meek for larger burns
The modified Meek technique for treating larger burns is well established [6-8,12,14,15,27] . For large TBSA burns with limited donor site availability, the ability to
cover as much area as possible, as quickly as possible, allows for larger burns to be treated with fewer procedures and a reduced need to re-crop donor sites.
Reports show that the overall Meek take rates range from 60%-100%, with the time to healing varying from 7 to 90 days. In our cohort, the mean length of stay
was 64 days, which is comparable to the literature range of 27 to 160 days, with a mean of 72.5 days [2,7,9-11,13,16,19,22,24,25] . These studies included patients with
varying ages, frailty, and comorbidities, so the wide range in length of stay is not necessarily reflective of the Meek itself.
Several papers have evaluated postoperative infection rates in Meek patients in comparison to those receiving meshed grafts. Although infection has been cited
[2,6]
as a cause of graft failure, [1,32,33] no statistically significant difference was found between the infection rates of the two cohorts . The same was true for the rate
[24]
of colonization . In our experience, we have not observed a significantly elevated infection rate in patients receiving Meek grafts. However, data on this were
not specifically collected as part of this series, and this represents an area for future focus. This opinion is shared by other researchers, including those
conducting the ongoing intrapatient Meek RCT, who have listed postoperative infection rates in their outcomes for evaluation [8,34] .