The Effect of Platelet Rich Plasma on Pain at Skin Graft Donor Sites

A well-known complaint after a split thickness skin graft surgery is pain at the graft donor site. In our patients, it has been have noticed those whose donor sites have been treated with platelet rich plasma (PRP) have endorsed decreased pain compared to those who have not. During our literature review few studies have looked at this issue. One such study by Miller et. al. looked at 5 patients whose donor site was treated with PRP showed a significant decrease in pain on a Likert visual pain scale. Kakudo et al. performed a side-by-side comparison on a single patient with half the wound treated with PRP and the other as a control. They found better epithelization and reduced pain during dressing changes for the treatment group. Both of these studies show promising results for pain reduction with PRP use, unfortunately there are no high quality randomized control trials that have looked at this. Another issue is many studies on PRP assess reduction of pain as a secondary outcome and instead focus on wound healing and epithelization primarily.

This study hopes to elucidate the effect of PRP application on graft donor site pain. Patients will be recruited to the study and randomized into either treatment or control group based on medical necessity for a skin graft. This study will assess pain at the donor site via Likert pain scale and monitor narcotic pain medication use.