This is developing into acomplete solution. Right now it appearsthat they can clean and coat severely burned skin in the same treatment session,and apply a protective and supportive coat on top of it. This results in a healing process that lastsonly a few days rather than weeks. Looking at the video (go to the link) we see a surface showing no signof likely scaring. This is amazing.
Thus it is clear that seconddegree burning can be well handled and I am sure that third degree burns willalso respond well once we figure out how to fine tune the protocols.
One other tweak would be toimmerse the injury in gel containing ample bio available oxygen but that willtake time to work out.
At least we are having seriousprogress on this particular healing nightmare.
Skin-cell spray gun drastically cuts healing time for burns
February 8, 2011 by Lin Edwards
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists in the US
The Skin-cell Gun works essentially like a sophisticated paint spraygun. It was developed by Professor Joerg C. Gerlach and colleages of theDepartment of Surgery at the University of Pittsburg’s McGowan Institute forRegenerative Medicine. The concept was first introduced in 2008.
Until now burns have usually been treated with skin grafts, whichinvolve taking skin sections from uninjured parts of the patient’s body, orgrowing sheets of skin artificially, and grafting them over the burn. Thegrafts can take several weeks or even months to heal, and during the recoveryperiod patients are prone to infections because of the damage to the skin,which is the body’s first line of defense against pathogens.
Scientists have been able to regenerate skin in the laboratory fordecades, but the process takes two to three weeks and the sheets of skinproduced are fragile. When grafted on, blisters can form beneath it due tosecretions, and can push up against the sheet and damage it.
Skin spraying have been in use for some time elsewhere, such as in Australia , where Dr Fiona Wood of the West Australia Burns Unit developed a method called“spray-on-skin.” Dr Wood’s method uses an aerosol system to spray on culturedskin cells. This system also cuts healing time to days rather than weeks ormonths, and the technique substantially cut the death toll in the Bali bombings in 2002.
Dr Gerlach said the new method uses an electronically controlledpneumatic device that does not injure the cells, while the other skin sprayingdevices are hand-pumped atomizers.
In a process taking only an hour and a half in total, a biopsy istaken from the patient’s undamaged skin and then healthy stem cells areisolated from the biopsy and an aqueous solution containing the cells issprayed on the burn.
The sprayed wound is then covered with a newly-developed dressing withtubes enmeshed within it and extending from each end. One set of tubesfunctions as an artery, while the second set functions as a vein. The tubes areconnected to an “artificial vascular system” and provide electrolytes,antibiotics, amino acids and glucose to the wound. The dressing keeps the woundclean and sterile, and provides nutrition for the skin stem cells to encouragethem to regenerate new skin.
After treatment the wound heals in just days, when it would have takenweeks to heal using traditional treatments. Dr Gerlach said patients had beentreated at the Berlin Burn Center
At the moment the technique can only be used on second-degree burns,but Dr Gerlach hopes it will later be able to tackle third-degree burns as well.
The research is funded by the US Department of Defense under the ArmedForces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM) consortium of researchinstitutions, which was formed in 2008 to research better treatments forwounded service personnel.
The Skin-cell Gun will be shown on the National Geographic channel inthe episode Explorer: How to Build a Beating Heart, which looks at the latesttissue regeneration techniques.
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