Doctors in Europe and Israel have started using a medical weapon that weaves a protective web to cover burns and wounds, in the hope that the breathable “skin substitute” will help patients recover without the need for painful dressing changes.
Nanomedic, the Israeli company that designed the Spincare system, says its device gives patients greater mobility – often essential for the rehabilitation of burns – and the ability to bathe, a process that can be difficult with traditional dressings. The translucent layer it produces allows doctors to examine the wound without touching it, says the company.
Rob Lyon, the managing director of the UK-based Spincare distributor, said the burns can be extremely difficult to cure, making the bandaging agonizing.
“Spincare is a non-contact device,” said Lyon, whose company, Regen Medical, specializes in burns and wound healing products. The protective mesh, said Lyon, “mimics the skin”, which allows patients to move more easily.
Electrospinning, the technique the device uses, involves the use of electricity to create nanofibers from a solution and has been used for years, including in the medical field. Nanomedic says its device, however, is much smaller than the large electrospinning machines previously available, meaning it can be carried up to the patient’s bed.
Gary J Sagiv, the company’s vice president of marketing and sales, said hospitals in Germany and Switzerland used the product for facial wounds, where large dressings can be weighed. Others, he said, applied it to wounds in people with diabetes, which can develop chronic foot wounds that can lead to amputation.
Not wanting to provide a price, which he said would differ depending on the country in which it was sold, Sagiv said Spincare was inexpensive for hospitals compared to other advanced wound care bandages.
Baljit Dheansa, a UK doctor who specializes in burns and scars, said he used Spincare on five patients at Queen Victoria hospital in Sussex, with positive results on superficial burns. “You have this whitish thing that is quite robust and seems to handle most things,” he said.
With deep burns, it was less effective, he said, but clarified that Nanomedic did not say that Spincare would be useful for deep burns.
Dheansa said the product came at a time of debate in the medical community about whether the traditional approach of changing dressings regularly to assess wounds was counterproductive. Several specialized dressings already used by doctors do not need to be changed frequently.
“Spincare is the same type of concept – the idea of protecting a wound and letting nature do what it will do,” he said. “Although it is not absolutely new in the sense that it is a sticky dressing that sticks, it is a new way of applying it. And in some ways, it’s probably a little easier. “
“You get your laser-guided weapon system … you just rotate,” he joked, referring to the laser pointer on the tip of the medical weapon to help the user aim.
Queen Victoria Hospital has agreed to buy more disposable capsules for the product, according to Dheansa, and he hopes to produce research on its effectiveness.
“What we try as hard as we can is to have a very independent view of these things. Although a company says it does this and does it and does it, we arrived quite innocently and independently and said, you say that, but let’s really see what it does ”.
So far, said Dheansa, Spincare “does what it says on the can.”
“With this type of dressing, in the right circumstances, it just means that the patient does not need to learn how to make the dressings, is a little more flexible and does not need to worry so much. And relax a little more. “