Compression garments have been first line therapy for prevention and management of hypertrophic scarring since the 1970’s. They are designed with elastic fibres and may be custom made or ready to wear. The garment exerts pressure on the underlying tissues by being made smaller than the area they are designed to fit.
In the sixteenth century, Ambroise Paré, a French barber surgeon who pioneered battlefield medicine, described pressure therapy for scarring. In 1649, Thomas Johnson translated the original book “The Work of that Famous Chirugion Ambroise Paré” that was first published by Paré in 1545. Paré recommended using pressure onto scars to improve their quality by applying a lead plate, rubbed against mercury, onto the scars.
It was not until the middle of the twentieth century that elasticated conforming garments were first used to improve surgical wound scars on the neck. In 1960, Fujumori et al. published their experience of applying an adhesive foam mould to neck hypertrophic scars. At a similar time, Cronin and Gottlieb separately reported using cervical splints after the release of neck contractures and reconstruction with split-thickness skin grafts.
Dr Duane Larson, the chief of staff of Shriners Hospitals for Children, and his team were the first to introduce the modern elasticated custom-made pressure garment, as we know it today, for burns. Several publications from their centre in the late 1960s and early 1970s publicised the technique in the USA and Canada and then worldwide.
Description provided by Susan Waller of United Arab Emirates
