Vitiligo: treatment by dermabrasion and epithelial sheet grafting

Several years ago, a surgical technique for treating depigmentation resulting from burn injuries was developed. The treatment of this problem in the patient with burns was consistently successful.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the usefulness of the surgical technique developed for patients with burn injuries to determine whether the same technique would be useful in treating patients with vitiligo whose skin did not repigment with conventional medical treatments.

Five patients with stable vitiligo were treated. The epithelium of the vitiliginous areas was removed by dermabrasion. The dermabraded area was then reepithelialized with epithelial sheet grafts sufficient to cover the entirety of the vitiliginous dermabraded region.

Each operation was successful. Scarring did not develop in the repigmented or donor site regions. The final color match has been good to excellent in all patients.

Good to excellent repigmentation was observed in each patient. We believe our results, to date, are more successful than the results of other procedures reported previously in the medical literature.