Could artificial skin change the future of plastic surgery?

Artificial skin technology is driving innovation from reconstructive plastic surgery to the development of tactile, stretchable, and human-friendly materials, and these advances have great potential for applications as diverse as humanoid robots and wearable computers.

 

In the 21st century, students get double eyelid surgery after graduation, celebrities go public with their plastic surgery, and people are called “plastic dolls. Plastic surgery has become a much bigger part of life than in the past. Plastic surgery in Korea, in particular, is famous around the world, and it’s not just for aesthetics, but also for reconstruction.
Plastic surgery was originally designed for people who suffered from discomfort due to accidents or illnesses, not for beauty. Reconstructive plastic surgeons help patients recover from trauma after surgery, allowing them to live a normal life. Of the 2,000 patients who visit the burn center at Hanlim University’s Hangang Sungshim Hospital annually, about 80 are from China and Southeast Asia. These reconstructive surgeries require skin substitutes, and skin is often taken from other parts of the body to graft new skin in place of the damaged skin. The most important technology in this process is artificial skin.
Artificial skin must be resistant to infection and dehydration, and it must pass selective permeability tests to be medically developed. It also needs to be stretchable, durable, elastic, and flexible, since skin naturally changes to match the muscles underneath.
Artificial skin first appeared in 1981 by John F. Burke, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in the United States, and Ionias V. Janas, a professor of chemistry at MIT. They combined collagen fibers derived from cowhide with long sugar molecules to create a lattice-structured “polymer membrane” that was attached to a layer of viscous plastic. This membrane resembled skin and helped skin regenerate by protecting it from infection and dehydration. However, early artificial skin was little more than a membrane over the recovering skin, and it suffered from numbness to pressure and pain and unnatural movement.
Early artificial skin was often used as a substitute during the recovery period. However, as science advanced, research began to replace skin with artificial materials. This is so that reconstructive procedures can be performed on patients with full-body burns or in situations where other tissues have been destroyed that are difficult to replace. For researchers, it was important to create natural-looking skin by addressing tactile and movement issues.
Tactile sensations are not desensitized to sustained stimulation and are felt by a combination of senses. The Pacini corpuscles are responsible for pressure, the Ruffini corpuscles for temperature, and the Meissner corpuscles for touch. To realize tactile sensation in artificial skin, electrical devices must be embedded throughout the skin, but artificial skin requires stretchability, flexibility, and thinness to accommodate semiconductors and circuits.
Recent research has overcome these challenges to create an artificial robotic hand that can feel sensations. Techniques have been developed that use carbon nanotubes to construct electrical circuits, or polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and nanowires to increase sensitivity. This has made it possible to detect when a light ladybug sits down.
Now, combining nerves and electrical signals will create the perfect artificial skin technology. These artificial skin technologies can be used not only for reconstructive procedures, but also for humanoid robots, healthcare information input, wearable computer design, and much more.
The technology behind reconstructive and cosmetic surgery has been evolving for decades, and has recently undergone a radical transformation. Artificial skin membranes, which were previously used as a temporary covering, have improved significantly, making it possible to perform reconstructive plastic surgery even in cases where it is difficult to transplant one’s own skin tissue due to burns. Research has led to the development of human-friendly materials that are both stretchable and sensitive, combined with tactile implementation technology. Although it has not yet been used in actual procedures, it may soon be possible to replace burned skin with artificial skin that looks almost like your own.