New Technology Opens the Door for Faster Burn Injury Recovery

By Matt Phillion

Recovering from a severe burn injury can be as traumatic as the wound itself. The treatment process of harvesting skin from another location to treat the burn creates another painful injury to recover from.

A recent presentation at the British Burn Association conference presented a real-world analysis of over 6,300 burn patients and found that AVITA Medical’s RECELL ® System:

• Reduced hospital stays by 36% (6.2 days) for this patient population
• Saved a projected $300 million in costs over five years

“For surgeons treating burns, the common goal is to close the wound as fast as possible, reduce the pain of the injury, and get patients back to their lives sooner,” says Dr. Katie Bush, SVP of Scientific and Medical Affairs with AVITA Medical. “The longer a burn wound remains open, the greater the opportunity for infection and scarring.”

This is why technology that is designed to accelerate healing and reduce the amount of time patients spend in the hospital is crucial, says Bush.

“Over the past decade, advances have been made in the continuum of burn care technology that have been designed to help surgeons, and these run the gamut of burn treatment,” says Bush.

This includes options approved by the FDA or currently in clinical trials that offer techniques to diagnose the severity of burns, methods for excision that don’t use blades but rather employ enzymes to selectively remove damaged tissue, and other options in the reconstruction space that assist with wound closure.

“Our portfolio is focused on wound closure. When a person has a traumatic injury, it impacts them physically and emotionally. If we can get those wounds healed more quickly and get the patient out of the hospital faster, it can have a significant impact on their lives,” added Bush.

RECELL was developed to address a major limitation when a patient is severely injured, Bush explains. When you have to use the patient’s own skin to heal them, how can you do that better?

“How can we do more with the patient’s healthy skin so we don’t further increase their trauma?” says Bush. “Imagine entering the hospital with a severe burn, and the surgeon says, ‘I’m going to have to remove healthy skin to get the tissue to treat you.’ You’ve undergone a trauma, and then there’s more trauma. Being able to reduce the amount of tissue needed to effectively treat an injury is very meaningful to patients.”

For many surgeons, this sort of new technique is top of mind for bigger burns. Still, the reality is that any ability to lessen the further trauma for smaller injuries can also be very significant, Bush notes. And from both a clinical and health economics perspective, there are benefits to be found.

“Burns happen every day, and the statistics around these injuries show that the majority of burns are less than 10% total burn surface area (TBSA)—an area about the size of an arm,” says Bush. “It’s a very big population, and there’s an opportunity to do better for these patients. Real-world data presented at the British Burn Association showed that deep, partial-thickness, second-degree burns less than 30% TBSA had a drastic reduction of 36% in length of stay when treated with RECELL compared to traditional grafting.”

The length of stay isn’t just to the patient’s benefit, as it reduces risks of hospital-born infections or other secondary effects of being admitted. While there is an incremental cost associated with the technology, reducing the length of stay results in meaningful downstream cost savings for the organization.

“An analysis of real-world data demonstrated that patients treated with RECELL had a significant reduction in length of stay, which correlated to millions of dollars saved over time as compared to patients treated with traditional skin-graft treatments,” says Bush. “The length of stay data also translates into increased throughput–being able to treat more patients in their burn units per bed by getting patients out of the hospital and home faster.”

Top-down awareness

If newer technologies are both beneficial for the patient and advantageous for hospital systems, what barriers exist preventing more widespread adoption?

“We need more awareness from the top down,” says Bush. “We’ll have a surgeon say they’d love to use this on patients with smaller-sized injuries, but they face limitations in that it’s only been deemed appropriate by the hospital system for burns that are 30% or greater.”

Bush says her organization is working to reach a broader audience about the impact the treatment can have on the length of stay. The key is connecting with CMOs, CFOs, and those within hospital administration who can see it’s a win-win.

A small burn is still a big injury

Burns might happen every day, but that does not lessen how severe an injury they represent.

“Our goal is to reduce the burden of burns on the patient and get them back to their lives sooner,” says Bush. “The numbers don’t lie. But we’re also fortunate in that we get to talk to patients about their experience with RECELL and know how it impacted them.”

Avita hopes to expand the treatment’s reach.

“It’s about becoming the standard of care,” she adds. “Right now, we’ve got a good footprint. About 20% to 25% of patients who are eligible for RECELL are being treated with it, so we know there are many patients with smaller burns that are not getting the technology. Our goal is for everyone who needs it to have access.”

AVITA Medical recently launched a new kit designed to treat even smaller injuries, face- or hand-sized, for example, to make sure treatment cost isn’t a barrier for injuries of that size.

“If you or a loved one has a burn that’s considered a small burn, to that patient, that’s not a small injury,” says Bush. “If you get burned and require medical attention that results in grafting of any size, that’s serious. You want the best technology for the situation. We’re getting more and more data to support using RECELL with smaller burns.”

Closing wounds faster reduces risk

Another factor that significantly reduces patient burden and lowers associated complication risks is facilitating earlier definitive wound closure. Faster wound closures mean injuries are less likely to scar or become infected. Not only do surgeons need improved skin grafting processes, but there is also an opportunity to help prepare the wound to be ready for skin grafting in less time.

“It’s typically two to three weeks before a burn is ready for skin grafting when a dermal matrix is used, so we wanted to develop a product that decreases that time,” says Bush.

To that end, AVITA has co-developed Cohealyx, a dermal matrix designed to support early cellular infiltration and revascularization. The first clinical data on Cohealyx demonstrated wound bed revascularization and graft readiness in five to 10 days, decreasing the time to wound closure and lessening the window for complications compared to other techniques.

Reduction in length of stay, coupled with clinical benefits of minimizing the time to grafting, can support hospitals in delivering quality care under resource constraints, Bush notes.

Matt Phillion is a freelance writer covering healthcare, cybersecurity, and more. He can be reached at matthew.phillion@gmail.com.