You think its bad now????-it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better, here's a snippet of what to expect--
`Skin' a burning issue
04jun06
SPRAY-ON-SKIN invented by former Australian of the Year Fiona Wood will undergo its first proper medical trial after suggestions it doesn't work.
Dr Wood, who was honoured for her groundbreaking medical career, yesterday conceded there was no large-scale evidence proving the effectiveness of her treatment.
Used extensively in Australian hospitals, the treatment has divided burns specialists.
Sydney's Concord Hospital's head of burns, Peter Haertsch, has been given ethical approval to conduct the first clinical trial of spray-on skin involving a minimum of 50 patients.
Dr Haertsch said members of the public had an enormous expectation of the product, which he did not believe was justified.
"We use it," he said. "It's not doing any harm, but we don't know if it's doing any good. We suspect it's not.
"There is no way of knowing if a patient has healed because of spray-on skin or the normal healing process. We're doing a trial to try to nail it on the head."
But Dr Wood told The Sunday Times the lack of "level 1 evidence" – random trials – did not indicate the product did not work. Rather, it was an indication of the difficulty of staging trials on burns patients.
Dr Wood said the treatment was here to stay, but the best methods of use were still being developed.
"I've never said it was the panacea for burns," she said.
In a medical paper published this month in Burns Journal – of the International Society for Burn Injuries – Dr Wood said the level of evidence to support the use of the technology in major burn injuries was "limited".
Hailed as revolutionary, the process of growing skin cells and then spraying them on to an open wound has been controversial in the medical community.
In 2002, the process shot to fame when Dr Wood, Australian of the Year in 2005, used it to treat burns victims in Perth after the Bali bombing.
Patient Antony Svilicich said he was lucky to be treated by Dr Wood and her spray-on-skin.
"I think it helped save my life," he said.
Mr Svilicich suffered burns to 64 per cent of his body and the spray was used in conjunction with traditional skin grafts.
"Some surgeons say it doesn't have as good an end result, with the skin very thin and fragile, but it's still like normal skin and it helped save my life," he said.
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