A review on porcine burn and scar models and their relevance to humans

Porcine thermal burns have been widely employed for examining the beneficial effects of novel burn treatments prior to clinical application and for understanding the mechanisms of burn wound healing 1, 2. The advantages of these porcine burns over other animal burns are well described by others, such as the well described close resemblance to human skin in structure and in wound healing. Importantly, unlike heterogeneous burns in humans, the burns created in porcine burn models are relatively consistent in depth, size and location; therefore the effect of manipulations and burn treatment on wound healing outcome can be easily accomplished. Furthermore, in porcine burns the subjective clinical assessment of wound healing and scar appearance can be readily compared with the histological analysis of biopsies, which is usually unavailable in human burns and scars. Nevertheless, many porcine burn models in the literature do not detail all elements described above. It should be noted that Singer and colleagues 1 have thoroughly characterised the burns and scars in their porcine model. This review focuses on these porcine burns/scars from both literature and our own experience and covers the most crucial issues in burns/scars, such as burn depth, wound infection, re-epithelialisation, wound contraction, and scar evaluation, in order to lessen the gap between experimental research and human burns/scars.