Ann: First US Surgeon Podium presentations of Novosorb BTM, page-18

This is from an interview with Dr Bill Hickerson, published in August last year. Dr Hickerson is also the Medical Director of the Firefighters Burn centre in Memphis which treats more than 500 burns victims annually. Note the reference to BTM.

"Burn care is a lot different now," Dr. Hickerson said. "Basically at the time I sustained my burn they went through a process called auto debridement, which meant that the burns got infected and you could just remove the dead tissue, and the bacteria helped you get rid of a lot of that. Then they would go in and clean everything up and take you back to dressing changes that were basically four times a day with wet to dry dressings, pulling off any debris that was left. Then back to surgery for skin grafts.

"Now we do things a lot differently. When I had my burn (as a child), a 30 percent burn had a high mortality rate. Nowadays, I just got through operating on one of our 80 percent burns who has very little left to do - probably one more surgery, two at most, before we have all of his coverage. We start early, we excise all the dead tissue, we utilize the skin they have, and we use skin substitutes that are available now."

Pig skin was an early skin substitute, then Biobrane, Integra and PriMatrix.

"Now we also have BTM, a new product called Polarity, cultured epithelial autografts, which are test tube skin, all of these things that we can draw upon and find the combinations that we need," Dr. Hickerson said.

http://www.memphismedicalnews.com/a-burn-surgeon-who-knows-how-it-feels-cms-638