Clinical application of collagen sheet, YCWM, as a burn wound dressing

In the Linkou Burn Unit, a recently developed new wound dressing derived from porcine skin was evaluated. This newly designed porcine dressing, called young collagenous wettable membrane (YCWM), was developed by the staff of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology of Chang Gung Memorial Hospital. Many specific characteristics, such as negligible antigenicity, semitransparency, sterilizability, good pain relief and low costs, have been associated with it. The results of a clinical trial on 59 wounds on 50 burn patients proved encouraging. Some disadvantages such as maceration and delayed eschar separation were noted. We conclude that YCWM is suitable for the treatment of the clean, dry donor sites and superficial partial skin loss burn wounds of non-infected, non-immunocompromised patients.