VITILIGO - TREATMENT BY DERMABRASION AND EPITHELIAL SHEET GRAFTING

Background: Several years ago, a surgical technique for treating depig mentation resulting from burn injuries was developed. The treatment of this problem in the patient with bums was consistently successful. Ob jective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the usefulness o f the surgical technique developed for patients with burn injuries to determine whether the same technique would be useful in treating patie nts with vitiligo whose skin did not repigment with conventional medic al treatments. Methods: Five patients with stable vitiligo were treate d. The epithelium of the vitiliginous areas was removed by dermabrasio n. The dermabraded area was then reepithelialized with epithelial shee t grafts sufficient to cover the entirety of the vitiliginous dermabra ded region. Results: Each operation was successful. Scarring did not d evelop in the repigmented or donor site regions. The final color match has been good to excellent in all patients. Conclusion: Good to excel lent repigmentation was observed in each patient. We believe our resul ts, to date, are more successful than the results of other procedures reported previously in the medical literature.