Typically in this scenario you would refer to the procedure as a skin graft, where skin is taken from an area of healthy skin (which will eventually heal) and laid down on another area where skin has been lost.
Skin is an organ that requires blood flow to survive, just like any other organ. When you graft skin, you depend on its ability to "take", that is, to integrate into the bed you've laid it on. This requires growing new blood vessels from the bed into the graft. If it doesn't happen before the graft dies from lack of nutrition, the graft fails.
Graft take relies on the healing process, which among other things involves a lot of cell growth and division. Radiation kills or impairs cells' ability to divide, leading to reduced ability to accept a graft.
I don't know specifically if/why radiation burns would be worse than regular thermal burns in this regard, but my suspicion is that it is due to greater depth of penetration with radiation vs. thermal energy.
JustTrustMe13 t1_itklh6r wrote
Reply to Why do intense radiation burns often reject skin transplants? Is this common with intense regular burns? by captainfactoid386
Typically in this scenario you would refer to the procedure as a skin graft, where skin is taken from an area of healthy skin (which will eventually heal) and laid down on another area where skin has been lost.
Skin is an organ that requires blood flow to survive, just like any other organ. When you graft skin, you depend on its ability to "take", that is, to integrate into the bed you've laid it on. This requires growing new blood vessels from the bed into the graft. If it doesn't happen before the graft dies from lack of nutrition, the graft fails.
Graft take relies on the healing process, which among other things involves a lot of cell growth and division. Radiation kills or impairs cells' ability to divide, leading to reduced ability to accept a graft.
I don't know specifically if/why radiation burns would be worse than regular thermal burns in this regard, but my suspicion is that it is due to greater depth of penetration with radiation vs. thermal energy.