>>10671623If you're trying to remove a xenograft to see if the wound bed is more vascularized, it's really not an issue. In fact, usually what happens is you remove the graft and see a wound bed that hopefully is more pink. The graft is on for a number of days, not very long, and does not fully attach. You're not worried about hurting the vessels by taking off the graft. In fact, what you generally have to do is take off the graft and then scrape off the most superficial part of the wound bed with a certain type of blade to see how much it bleeds. More bleeding means better vascularization. If you keep scraping deeper and deeper and it doesn't bleed, that means it's not well vascularized and the tissue is dying or dead. In that case, you keep scraping/debriding until you reach some viable tissue that is bleeding. Then you can replace the xenograft and try to improve vascularization again.
Sometimes you can just do an autograft off the bat and you don't need any other type of graft beforehand.
You are right in that generally only upper layers of skin are removed on an autograft, so it can reheal, though it will scar. Sometimes you do an autograft that uses up all of the layers of the epidermis and dermis, and gets into subcutaneous fat. I actually don't remember what the process is for those donor sites. I never did one like that.
