Skip to main content
Health & Wellness

Apligraf: A New Milestone in Skin Regrowth

By St. Martin Hospital
January 2, 2019

St. Martin Hospital Wound Care Center reached a new milestone when Kerry Thibodeaux, M.D. and Wound Care Center Medical Director, recently applied the first Apligraf to a patient. Apligraf is a unique living-cell based product used to treat chronic venous leg ulcers and diabetic foot ulcers. These cells, found in healthy human skin, are cultured and can then produce billions of similar cells. When applied to a diabetic foot ulcer or a venous leg ulcer that has previously been unsuccessful in healing, the body can use these living cells to begin the healing process with no major reported side effects to date.

When healthy skin is wounded, the proteins, cells and growth factors in the skin tell the body to rebuild and grow new skin. However, with diseases like diabetes or circulation problems, these cells do not work properly and the normal healing cycle, including the regrowth of skin, is broken. This results in a diabetic foot ulcer or a venous leg ulcer which becomes extremely difficult to heal

While this is Dr. Thibodeaux’s first Apligraf application at St. Martin Hospital’s Wound Care Center, he has been one of the product’s earliest users and one of the largest users in the United States over the product’s history. In 1996, Dr. Thibodeaux, along with three other surgeons and wound care physicians were selected to represent each major region of the country and sent to Australia to be trained to apply the first piece of Apligraf in the South. Dr. Thibodeaux is a major advocate for this cutting-edge product as it allows actual human cells to be used without having to make another wound on the patient’s body, which is the case in traditional skin grafting. 

Apligraf is an advanced wound care product and cannot be accessed at all area hospitals or wound care centers. Apligraf is accessible to qualifying patients of St. Martin Hospital Wound Care Center due to the hospital’s Critical Access Designation.

Topics in this article