Closure of
fasciotomy wounds is often a clinical problem after successful management of
compartment syndrome. Commonly, split-thickness skin grafts or regional composite grafts are used for
fasciotomy closure. However, functional and cosmetic results would be improved if primary reapproximation of these
wounds were more practical. The main obstacle that must be overcome is excessive tension on the
wound edges. A recently developed skin-stretching device (Sure-Closure, Life Medical Sciences, Princeton, N.J.) allows large tissue defects to be closed with approximation of the
wound edges. In this report we describe two patients in whom closure of the
fasciotomy incisions was successfully accomplished with the skin-stretching device. These patients included an 11-month-old girl with a circumferential
burn of the left arm, and a 42-year-old woman involved in a motor vehicle accident who sustained
frostbite and
crush injury to her left upper extremity without
bone fractures. The skin-stretching device produced excellent functional and cosmetic
wound closure results and eliminated the need for additional operative procedures.