Burn injuries are quite common and can be sustained in day-to-day activities like cooking or in industrial accidents. While some burns injuries are not severe others can prove to be fatal. These injuries are the cause of roughly 1,80,000 deaths every year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
A burn injury occurs when the skin or any other organic tissue is exposed to heat, chemicals, or due to radioactivity, friction, or electricity.
Burn wounds can be excruciatingly painful and take time to heal. The treatment for burn injuries ranges from applying ointments to skin grafting in severe cases.
Besides these, new treatments are emerging that can work better in the early cosmetic and functional recovery of the patient.
According to a 2020 study published in the journal BMC, stem cell therapy could be used to treat burn injuries. The study found that stem cell therapy “exerts a healing function for burn wounds, mainly through angiogenesis and anti-inflammatory actions”.
Stem cells are considered the body’s raw materials that lead to the generation of other cells with specialised functions. These cells can be guided to become specific cells that can be then used to repair and regenerate tissues in people and in turn heal injuries.
In other procedures such as skin grafting, a section of the patient’s healthy skin is used to replace the scar tissue. The skin graft can also be sourced from deceased donors or pigs. In some cases, plastic surgery is also conducted n patients whose face or any other part is disfigured due to burn injuries. The surgery also helps in improving the flexibility of the joints that are affected by the scarring.
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