Luckily for me, my Mum was tuned into BBC1's 'Inside Out' East this week and came across a fantastic new treatment for scars that I'm very excited about!
The treatment works by harvesting a tiny patch of skin from your body. The area selected will have a similar colour and texture to the area you are trying to fix. The piece of skin is put in a little machine that whizzes it round and pulls all your cells off the skin. While this is being done, laser dermabrasion is used on your scarring to flatten it. The skin cells from the 'whizzed up' harvested skin are collected and suspended in a clear fluid. This fluid is sprayed onto the dermabraded area of your scarring and then it's all covered up. In 7 days, your skin cells will have begun to grow your own skin, right over the scarred area. Once the skin has settled (and I know from experience I'm in the early days, this can take 2 years) you could have your normal pigmentation and texture back in your scarred area. In effect you have used 'spray on skin' to grow your own skin back. The skin will even have melolin in it, so it will no longer be as sun-sensitive as normal scarring and will have 'normal' pigmentation.
According to Avita Medical: 'Tissue collection, cell segregation and preparation of the cell suspension takes approximately 20-30 minutes in total during which time the treatment area is prepared. Once processed, the cell suspension is available for immediate use and can cover a treatment area up to 80 times the area of the donor biopsy.'
It can also be used to help donor sites heal after a skin graft. This would be a great use of the procedure. My donor site didn't heal well at all and took several weeks of agony before it finally decided to grow new skin. The skin is still very discoloured due to the slow healing. A treatment like this may have helped avoid such a horrible situation.
The makers of the treatment have also used it on smaller burns when they are new, to help them heal.
It sounds too good to be true!!! It's worth watching it on Inside Out, as you can see the treatment in action.
INSIDE OUT EAST - VIDEO LINK - click here
I'm very excited by this procedure as it means that after my (long and dreary) 2 year wait, if I'm not happy with my 'natural' results, I might be able to improve them. At this point, if someone told me what I have now is what I will be left with, I would freak out. I am planning to heal well but sometimes, the body has other ideas! It's nice to know there are treatments like this coming out.
If anyone knows more about this treatment or has had it themselves, please could you send me an email or drop a comment in the box below? It would be great to hear some first hand experiences. Thanks!
AVITA MEDICAL
WARNING: There are a few pictures on the Medical Site that might turn your stomach if you are, like me, sensitive to burn pictures.
No comments:
Post a Comment