A patient who suffered extensive burns from a vehicle fire is on the road to recovery after surgeons at Burn & Reconstructive Centers of Florida at Kendall Regional Medical Center successfully used the man’s own lab-grown skin to help heal his injuries.
The surgeons used a cutting-edge technology called Cultured Epidermal Autograft (CEA) on the patient, the first time this technology has been used in one of Florida’s busiest burn center. CEA involves treating severely burned patients by first growing more of their own skin in a lab.
The Boston-based Vericel Corp. developed this method of tissue regeneration to treat patients who, after a large burn injury, do not have enough of their own healthy skin available to graft onto their wounds.
“From two small biopsies, you can grow a tremendous amount of needed skin to cover an extensively burned patient,” said Dr. Haaris S. Mir, Medical Director of the Kendall Regional Burn Center. “Patients who might not otherwise have options of using their own skin can be successfully treated with CEA, which closes wounds and reduces patient’s recovery time in the hospital.”
How it Works:
Two samples of uninjured skin, roughly the size of postage stamps, are taken and tested. In a process that takes three weeks, those samples are used to reproduce the patient’s skin cells on multiple sheets, slightly larger than a playing card. The surgery to apply the CEA typically includes covering the patient’s wounds with the sheets of regrown skin like patch work.
Dr. Mir led the Plastic Surgery team, which spent five hours in surgery applying the 96 sheets of CEA to the patient’s wounds. Because the sheets are fragile, much like tissue-paper, they must be heavily backed by dressings and the patient immobilized as much as possible to allow the skin cells to grow. A second surgery is performed after seven to 10 days to delicately remove the backing on which the cells were grown.
“We are proud of the tremendous results we have achieved in treating burn patients,” said Dr. Mir. “Also, not only do our patients receive the most advanced burn care in South Florida, they are seen through their entire post burn rehabilitative and reconstructive process.”
Burn & Reconstructive Centers of Florida at Kendall Regional was established five years ago and treats more burn patients than any burn center in South Florida. Since opening, the burn center has treated more than 6,000 patients with the burn clinic having more than 22,000 patient visits.
About KRMC
Kendall Regional Medical Center is a facility of HCA East Florida, the largest healthcare system in Eastern Florida and an affiliate of Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). HCA East Florida has 14 hospitals, multiple ambulatory surgery centers, physician practices, imaging centers, and free-standing emergency care facilities, as well as a supply chain center and an integrated regional lab. Together, HCA East Florida employs more than 18,000 employees and has nearly 7,000 physicians on staff.
For more information, visit HCAEastFlorida.com.
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