Methods: Five systemically healthy, nonsmoker adults were recruited. One side of the palate was randomly chosen for pre-wounding by initial surgical incisions. Five days later standardized dimension FGGs were harvested from both the pre-wounded site and the contralateral site (control FGG). Complete wound healing (epithelial closure), postoperative pain and healing complications were assessed on postoperative (PO) days 3, 7, 14, and 21, by direct examination and questionnaires.
Results: On PO day 3 and 7, none of the FGG donor sites exhibited epithelial closure. On PO day 14, 40% of pre-wounded FGG donor sites and none of the control sites were completely healed; the corresponding values for day 21 were 80% and 60%. Pain (visual analog scale; VAS) scores on PO day 3 for pre-wounded and control FGG donor sites were 3.8±1.9 and 5.2±2.2, respectively (p<0.03; paired t-test). The corresponding VAS scores for PO day 7 were 1.8±2.7 and 4.2±2.9 (p<0.01), while for PO day 14 were 0.8±1.8 and 0.6±0.9 (p=0.85). No subject was experiencing pain, at either site, by PO day 21. Subjects consistently reported that pre-wounded FGG donor sites resulted in quicker healing and less postoperative bleeding than the control (conventional) FGG donor sites.
Conclusions: Pre-wounding FGG prior to harvest is well tolerated by systemically healthy nonsmoker patients and appears to improve the FGG donor site postoperative healing course and to reduce the associated morbidity.