The Virgen del Rocío Hospital in Seville is the first in Spain to implement advanced therapy to facilitate rapid and effective healing of wounds in large burns.
In Algeciras, in the south of Spain, Fran Fernández’s life changed completely one summer day seven years ago. The date is impossible for him to forget: August 5, 2017, he was affected by an explosion that burned 75% of his skin. When he arrived at the hospital, Fran was not given more than 48 hours to live, but today he is recovered thanks to more than a dozen operations and several grafts of own and artificial skin.
Artificial human skin or cultured skin has just been authorized by the Medicine Agency for its application as therapy in the Virgen del Rocío Hospital in Seville. It will be the first center in Spain that will be able to make hospital use of the advanced therapy drug ‘Human skin obtained by tissue engineering’ in patients of the Large Burns Unit.
An innovative treatment
David Rodríguez is one of the surgeons at this hospital who will work placing the skin grafts. He considers that upon being authorized by the Medicines Agency, the procedures for the application of the therapy will be shortened so The high risk of suffering from infections is also reduced in areas without skin.
But there are more advantages. Artificial skin is manufactured based on the specific needs of each patient, optimizing compatibility and integration. This advancement also reduces the need for additional grafts and shortens recovery timeimproving the quality of life of patients.
This skin is generated in the laboratories of the Cellular Production and Tissue Engineering Unit of the Virgen de las Nieves University Hospital, after years of research from an initial preclinical study in the Tissue Engineering Group of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Granada. guided by the professor and researcher of the ibs.GRANADAAntonio Campos.
To date, the Virgen de las Nieves University Hospital has manufactured more than 12 square meters of sheets of artificial human skin from the samples sent by Virgen del Rocío for the 18 patients treated, which has been successfully implanted in the Burns Unit of Seville.
The profile of the patient who benefits from this coverage is also very specific: they cannot present active infections on the skin surface and usually have from 60% to 90% of their burned body surface in adult patients, and more than 30% if it is a pediatric patient.
