Summary

Original source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4208746.stm

Details

• The East Grinstead team have embraced the technology, and used it to treat several patients with severe and extensive burns.
• The current method of treating burns victims is to take samples of skin from unaffected areas, and put them through a meshing machine.
• This expands the tissue, creating a string vest pattern of connected patches of skin surrounded by large holes.
• The technique can be used to cover big patches of tissue where the skin has been completely burned away.
• Mr Phil Gilbert, a consultant plastic surgeon who specialises in burns, told the BBC News website: "It can cover a much bigger areas and do it much more quickly.
• A healthy skin sample is taken from the patient, and split in the laboratory to separate out the surface cells, known as keratinocytes.
• Instead of creating a string vest pattern of tissue, this machine cuts the skin sample into tiny little squares.
• Mr Gilbert said the technique had been used to treat a man known as John Barratt - not his real name - who suffered 90% burns after being doused with petrol and set alight.
• "We would have struggled to keep him alive using the standard methods," he said.
• Mr Gilbert said the aim of the new study was to test whether the cultured cells continued to divide and form new skin, or whether new tissue only came from the tiny pieces of skin with which it is combined.
• Strict regulations on the storage of skin, introduced in the wake of concerns over CJD, mean that it is very expensive to culture cells in this way.
• The new study will focus on 24 adults with severe burns, and 50 children under the age of three with scalds.

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