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Burned Firefighters Can Now Recover in Days... Not Months! Warning: Graphic Photos
The Skin Gun
A simple idea backed by stem cell research allows burn victims with severe burns to heal in merely days. This is a must read for all firefighters, with a challenge to see if this technology is available in your community. If it is not, now you know what to make happen. We have a tendency as firefighters to get burned once in awhile and any new technological benefits need to be shared to alleviate unnecessary pain and suffering.
This is a good example of a second degree burn.
Standardized skin regeneration and application for burn victims takes weeks to months with typical outcomes seen in the above photo, post 2nd degree burn.
Skin is the largest organ in the body. When it is severely burned, it needs to be replaced quickly and massively. Existing standard techniques used now for burn victims takes weeks to months to regenerate the skin tissue. This is the reason people die, do to the high potential for infection of the damaged tissues. Finding a way to get normal healthy skin, within a one-week window has long been considered the "holy grail" for burn treatment.
Skin cells are seen above being "grown" for harvesting but takes weeks to months.
Instead of growing sheets of skin, which are VERY fragile to move, healthy skin stem cells are collected taking a biopsy, the patients own healthy cells are then isolated and then put into a water solution and prepared for "cell spraying".
Cell spraying is just like paint spraying, you just need a more sophisticated device that is computer controlled using health skin stem cells instead of paint.
When a patient reaches the emergency room, it takes about 1/2-hour to take a biopsy, process it and then spray the affected burn area with health cells that have had nothing less than amazing results according the National Geographic story on Skin Cell Painting.
This individual who is featured in the video was seriously burned on his face, shoulder and arm with 2nd degree deep burns that looked like the photograph above. He went into the hospital on a Friday and this is what he looked like on Monday. Pretty amazing.
While this procedure is not available everywhere yet, my intent on sharing this post is to enable you to challenge the closest burn center that YOU might have to use, ensuring that they know about this new technology and giving you the best chance for survival and leading a normal healthy life.
TCSS,
Mike Schlags, Fire Captain/Paramedic (Retd.)
Santa Barbara, CA
mschlags@gmail.com
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on
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Has anyone suffered 2nd degree burns or worse, using standard treatment protocols? To think that instead of painful skin grafts, using a spray gun with stem cells that result in minimal scaring, pain and suffering. Am I the only one that stands in total amazement at this incredible discovery? If you have suffered a burn injury, then you will immediately realize just how wonderful this will be for future burn injuries.
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Permalink Reply by Wade Seely on
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Mike,
All I can say is wow
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Somehow, I just don't see the inventor of this entrusting an old fire Captain to market the product... lol
With a little luck and pressure, this new technology will hopefully be available for firefighters across the country and the rest of the world. To see the short healing duration is the key thing that caught my attention. Having been burned more than once during the course of my 38 year career, anything that modern science can do to reduce pain and suffering should be the key priority for all.
Unfortunately, the "Skin Gun", is nothing but a prototype right now and hopefully someone will be able to make this thing available everywhere. Now there are some stocks to consider purchasing... Who knows, maybe the HeightsFF Company just might be the answer when it comes time to distributing this. Just remember the little guys when you make it big time! :D
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Permalink Reply by Brian Dumser on
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This is amazing to say the least. Now the trick will be to make this technology available nationwide if not worldwide! On my next hospital transport I'm going to ask about this. Stay safe!
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Permalink Reply by Fireyladd - Retired Chief Sharp on
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That is good information Bzy. As always right on top of things. AMAZING!
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Permalink Reply by Norm Tindell on
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Stem cell technology is possibly the key to regeneration of all parts of the body. We're going to see some amazing stem cell advances in treatments for things like alzheimer's, too. Great stuff, Cap!
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Captain,
Here is a link to a more easily distributed and user friendly set up for this.
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23876/
TCSS
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Thanks so much for sharing this article and information. This new process is nothing less than amazing the more I read and research the ReCell innovation. CBz
Just after the scald burn injury to a child.
12-months later, using the ReCell process...
Adult burns to the hand example:
2 weeks after the burn injury using the ReCell treatment.
Spraying on Skin Cells to Heal Burns
A new technique in burn treatment provides an alternative to skin grafts in the operating room.
Traditionally, treatment for severe second-degree burns consists of adding insult to injury: cutting a swath of skin from another site on the same patient in order to graft it over the burn. The process works, but causes more pain for the burn victim and doubles the area in need of healing. Now a relatively new technology has the potential to heal burns in a way that's much less invasive than skin grafts. With just a small skin biopsy and a ready-made kit, surgeons can create a suspension of the skin's basal cells--the stem cells of the epidermis--and spray the solution directly onto the burn with results comparable to those from skin grafts.
The cell spray is intended to treat severe second-degree burns, in which the top two layers of skin are damaged but the subcutaneous tissue is left intact. Third-degree burns, which are more severe, still require a skin graft. The spray, already approved for use in some countries, has garnered interest from the United States Army, whose Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine is funding a trial, slated to begin before the end of this year, of more than 100 patients.
The technology, developed by Australian surgeon Fiona Wood, relies on cells, such as skin progenitor cells and the color-imparting melanocytes, that are most concentrated at the junction between the skin's top two layers. With a small step-by-step kit dubbed ReCell, surgeons can harvest, process and apply these cells to treat a burn as large as 50 square inches. The kit, marketed by Avita Medical, a United Kingdom-based regenerative-medicine company, is a tiny, self-contained lab about the size and shape of a large sunglasses case.
After removing a small swatch of skin near the burn site (the closer the biopsy, the better for precise matching of color and texture), the surgeon places it in the kit's tiny incubator along with an enzyme solution. The enzyme loosens the critical cells at the skin's dermal-epidermal junction, and the surgeon harvests them by scraping them off the epidermal and dermal layers and suspending them in solution. The resulting mixture is then sprayed onto the wound, repopulating the burn site with basal cells from the biopsy site.
"Currently, treating any burn that requires a skin graft is the same technology we were routinely using 30 years ago," says James Holmes, a surgeon and the medical director of the Burn Center at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Current practice with larger burns requires grafts from donor skin that are anywhere from one-quarter to the complete size of the burn area. ReCell requires only as much as four square centimeters. "This allows you to take a very small skin biopsy and process it at the table there in the operating room using a fully prepackaged device," Holmes says. "You're able to cover an area that's 80 times the size of your biopsy."
Holmes is the lead investigator on an upcoming multicenter trial that will compare skin grafts and ReCell. Patients in the trial will act as their own controls: If a burn victim has a second-degree burn severe enough for surgeons to deem treatable by skin graft, half of the burn will be treated that way, while the other half will be treated with the cell spray.
Note: The article shared a photo and description that shows not a "Skin Gun" but instead something that looks like a disposable spray bottle.
Spray-on skin: In a unique treatment for second-degree burns, surgeons harvest a small number of skin cells through a skin biopsy, suspend them in solution, and then spray the resulting mixture onto a burn wound. Once in place, skin stem cells, called basal cells, proliferate to create a new layer of skin.
Credit: ReCell
Note: This process also works on post burns / scars...
before...
after...
What makes this whole thing very cool is that over 40 years ago, Star Trek's author, Gene Roddenberry invented a medkit tool that Doctor McCoy used that did exactly what the ReCell process does. There is no limit to what man can do by simply using their imagination... CBz
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The recell product seems to be more marketable to hospitals with it's more convienent size and all in one packaging. I am deffinetly going to check in with my nearest top rated burn centers for this tech. Thank you Captain for bringing this to everyones attention.
TCSS
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ReCell Spray-on Skin Grafts Photo courtesy of Avita Medical
And to think we once thought spray-on bandages were revolutionary. Doctors at the University of Utah’s Burn Care Center are reporting success in their pilot project testing stem cell solutions sprayed directly onto burns.
Combining a red-cell-free concentration of the patient’s own platelets and progenitor cells with calcium and thrombin, researchers created a solution that is sprayed on to burns topically. In tests, the spray has proven effective in the treatment of small burns and seems to improve the likelihood that a skin graft will take, which could carry positive implications for the application of this technology to other types of transplants.
The University’s research in spray-on stem cells comes on the coattails of a similar U.S. clinical trial of Australian-based ReCell that began last December.
ReCell, a comparable treatment method, has been in widespread use in Australia, Europe and China and garnered attention for its quick treatment of victims of a 2002 bombing in Bali. Much like the Utah study, the ReCell process dissolves basal cells and keratinocytes from a biopsy sample, producing a sprayable enzyme suspension.
Both methods show promise for the use of regenerative technologies in burn treatment. The U.S. Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine awarded the ReCell clinical trials a $1.45 million grant in 2009 to expedite the process, suggesting that there's enough interest for successful test results to trigger quick approval and eventual widespread use.
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Just another example of the technology that we first saw on Star Trek. Communicator = Cell Phone.
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