Saving the badly-burned

This is about an unprecedented medical breakthrough. Serious burns casualties who would have certainly died in the past are now being helped by a new artificial skin produced in a laboratory. In 1998 Stephane Savin (aged 39) and Philippe Mirada (22) both suffered third-degree burns covering 80% of their bodies. Both were saved and are now able to live a normal life, thanks to treatment at the Percy severe burns clinic in Clamart, an establishment at the cutting edge of medical science. A grief-filled, but finally hopeful, process recorded over a period of some two years in the photographs of Raphael Gaillarde. Two years of grafts, intensive care and finally physiotherapy that slowly brought these men back to life.

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For Stephane Savin from Montreuil this meant recreating his family life. Already the father of Carla and Felix, 3 and 6 years old respectively, he and his wife Valerie are planning a third child. But for Philippe, who lives with his parents, it is not going to be so easy: his youth and lesser experience of life will make it more difficult for him to accept the way he now looks.

A complex process, lasting over five months, to save the lives of these two men and repair their bodies was set in train at the major burns centre to which they were transferred in 1998. Grafts play the pivotal role in this process which makes it possible to recreate the skin tissue destroyed in the accident. The technique used by the surgeons at the Percy centre uses skin cultured in the laboratory. This involves a ‘biopsy’, ie a small skin sample is taken from one of the few areas not destroyed in the accident.

The samples are sent across the Atlantic to the Genzyme laboratory in Boston. There, technicians amongst the most highly-skilled in the world in this field, extract the ‘keratinocytes’. These are the cells which are most suitable for rapid multiplication, and through which the original tissue can be rebuilt in a matter of weeks.

In nine years of close co-operation with France, this highly-advanced technique has made it possible for more than 20 patients in France to have literally a new skin. Burns victims for whom in past times death was a foregone conclusion.