Burns can heal faster with spray-on skin

A GENERAL anaesthetic can affect memory, say US researchers in the journal Anaesthesia. Tests taken by middleaged people over four years showed those who’d had ops had small declines in immediate memory. This may be linked to memory loss receptors in the brain, activated by anaesthetic drugs to ensure the surgery is not remembered. NEW research has confirmed the benefits of treating burns with the patient’s own skin cells.

In cell-spray auto-grafting, small samples of the patient’s skin are removed and treated with enzymes that make the cells proliferate.

They are then put into a solution that’s sprayed over the patient’s wound. In a US study recently reported in the journal Burns, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh reported that 44 patients with large, deep burns treated with the spray required on average six days in hospital — shorter than would normally be expected for burns of their size (from ten days to two weeks or longer).