The Skin Graft Knife

In a scene familiar to all plastic surgeons, these casts demonstrate a surgeon’s hands holding a guarded, disposable bladed skin graft knife. He is poised to harvest a split skin graft. This evocative cast by Professor Rowan Pritchard-Jones and Consultant Prosthetist Jane McPhail at Whiston Hospital on Merseyside, is formed in dental stone. 

The right hand holds a genuine “Watson”, or “Modified Braithwaite” device, almost impossibly incorporated within the cast, whilst the left hand appears to flatten and tighten the donor site, commonly the thigh, prior to harvesting a partial thickness sheet of skin. The black portion at the end of the knife is not a part of it, but has been attached to permit the sculpture to stand on a flat surface. A long, disposable razor blade sits under the locked, variable position roller bar. When pressed down onto lubricated skin whilst moved reciprocally away from, and towards the surgeon, the knife shaves or harvests a predictable and constant thickness sheet of skin for transplantation to an area of raw wound. 

These images are by Photographer John Heaton.