skin

This is a first in France on such a large skin surface, rejoices the Nantes University Hospital. During last summer, a patient with an 85% burn and whose vital prognosis was in jeopardy was cared for by teams from the burn center of the Nantes public hospital. The patient’s total body surface area burned was such that “the ratio between the areas to be grafted and the areas of skin that might be removed” was “very unfavorable”. Faced with the seriousness of the situation, doctors opted for an exceptional treatment: an innovative dressing containing animal hemoglobin, in this case marine worms.

The results were “spectacular” since the use of this solution made it possible to “continuously restart the healing process”. The patient was able to be transferred to a specialized rehabilitation center following three months of hospitalization in an acute center, welcomes the University Hospital, which describes a “success”.

Bloodworms present in the Atlantic and the English Channel

“Usually, for 85% burn victims we carry out numerous operations to excise the burns and gradually replace them with the patient’s skin. In this patient, in order to limit the surface to be grafted and therefore to be taken from the rare unburned areas, we opted for this dressing in order to try to heal the thorax, abdomen and back without surgery, allowing us to preserve the graft donor sites for the hands and lower limbs,” explains Pierre Perrot, head of department at the Nantes burn center.

Developed using technology from Hemarina, a Breton bioparhamecutical laboratory, the dressing used is enriched with hemoglobin fromarenicola marina, bloodworms present on the beaches of the Atlantic and the English Channel. Its main advantage is its power of oxygenation: worm hemoglobin, which can be injected directly into the bloodstream, carries 40 times more oxygen than human hemoglobin. Significantly smaller than a red blood cell, it is also “capable of reaching areas that are very difficult to access”.

The future prospects for this new treatment are “immense”, considers the Nantes University Hospital. Because this dressing also aims to treat hypoxic wounds such as diabetic foot ulcers, bedsores, or other wounds “for which there is currently no satisfactory therapeutic solution”.