The meeting room at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research in Perth is typically corporate: no natural light, functional furniture, neutral colour scheme.
#Worst burn victims skin
Which is why, at 64, there’s a glowing biography about her, to be published next week, that she has not read a new Stan mini-series about the Bali bombings (in which she is played by Rachel Griffiths) that she has not seen and a multitude of new burns technologies – including intelligent surgical tools, 3-D skin printers and scarless healing cream – that she cannot stop talking about. She’s both a confident and a self-deprecating person, and for both reasons, she finds watching or reading about herself “excruciating”. And yet, she tells me kindly, it’s unlikely she will read this profile. This June, she was awarded the Australian Society for Medical Research medal. She has an Order of Australia she is a National Living Treasure she has been voted the “most trusted” person in the country a record six times.
In 2005, Wood was named Australian of the Year. Today, however, it’s been used on some 15,000 patients across more than 30 countries, including the US, where it was FDA-approved in 2018. At the time, various Australian burns specialists rejected Wood’s innovation (which she developed with scientist Marie Stoner) and refused to use it. Of course, not everyone believes in miracles. After Bali, her revolutionary “spray-on skin” – using a patient’s own skin cells sprayed on to the wound to form a new top layer of skin – came suddenly to public attention, brightening those dark weeks with the gleam of a miracle. She was a supremely good doctor in the traditional mould: unrelenting in her fight to save lives.īut she was also something more: a scientist who had spent years – mostly at night, while her six children were asleep – working on a new technology to treat burns. Of the 28 people who arrived on the tarmac in Perth she lost only three, whose deaths stay with her. She fought to save people who might otherwise have been given up for dead. Professor Fiona Wood oversaw the treatment of more people in the aftermath of the Bali bombings than any other person in Australia. But the least unprepared person, perhaps, was the 44-year-old, 5′1″ female head of the Burns Service of Western Australia. If your burn has healed, you may also be given a compression glove.W hen the 1000-kilogram bomb exploded outside the Sari Club in Bali on October 12, 2002, no one was prepared. Your therapist may bandage your hand with a stretchy bandage called ‘coban’ which helps to push the oedema out of the swollen area. You should avoid lying flat as this encourages fluid collection in your face and head which can lead to difficulty opening your eyes and may also affect your breathing. If you have facial swelling it is extremely important to maintain an upright position. Upright position (for face, head or neck burns) Please ask your therapist if you are unsure. Sometimes movement is not encouraged (e.g. Your therapist may show you specific exercises to help with this. Muscles act as a pump, pushing fluid away from the swollen area. Slings, pillows, tables and sometimes splints may be used to position your limb. The swollen part should be higher than the rest of the limb so that gravity can assist. ElevationĮlevation will encourage drainage of fluid and allow it to be reabsorbed by the body. There are steps that you can take to reduce the amount of swelling you have and to prevent it from getting worse. In this instance it is even more important to follow the advice below to minimise the negative effects of fluid. If you have had a skin graft, tissue fluid and bleeding can affect the healing and in some cases, may cause the graft to fail. Otherwise it can increase pain, make it difficult to move, cause stiffness or deformity of joints, interfere with the normal functioning of your muscles, nerves and blood vessels and can cause a superficial burn to deepen. It is very important that the swelling is reduced as soon as possible. The extent and location of the swelling will depend on how the burn was caused and the location and depth of the burn injury. Swelling tends to occur soon after injury and generally decreases after 48–72 hours, although this timescale can vary. The swelling is caused by fluid leaking from blood vessels and collecting around damaged areas. For example, if your burn is on your arm, then your hand can also become swollen, due to the effects of gravity. Why do I have oedema?ĭepending on the size of the burn, you may experience swelling immediately around the injured area or it may involve other parts of the body.
#Worst burn victims how to
This leaflet will help you understand why you may have oedema following your burn injury and give you some advice about how to reduce swelling and prevent complications. Oedema is the medical name for ‘swelling’.
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