In Algeciras, in southern Spain, Fran Fernández’s life changed one summer day seven years ago. A day impossible to forget.
“On August 5, 2017, a switch blew in the hotel where I worked while we were having dinner and I burned 75% of my body. My arms and legs mostly, but also a little bit of my head, ear, back and buttocks”he says.
When he arrived at the hospital, he was given less than 48 hours to live, but today he has recovered thanks to a dozen operations and several grafts of his own skin and artificial skin.
“Both hands and my right arm received grafts directly from my body. It was healthy skin that I had, so it could be taken from one part of my body and put on another, explains Fran. This skin is more elastic, you pinch it and hold it well. Artificial skin is harder, more rigid.”
At the Seville hospital, artificial skin grafts have just been authorized for the first time as a medicine. David Rodríguez is one of the surgeons who will be in charge of applying it.
“The culture of keratinocytes has been done for thirty years. But now we have the authorization of the Spanish Medicines Agency to use it as a therapy, explains the surgeon. As we know that the therapy works, they gave us permission, it is no longer experimental, it is a therapy.”
It took years of research to develop the artificial skin. The research is led by Professor Antonio Campos of the University of Granada.
“We have always been dedicated to observing the natural tissues of our body under the microscope, he said. Today, not only do we observe them to better understand the human body, but we also manufacture them in the laboratory to heal.”
So far, 12 square meters of artificial skin have been manufactured and applied to patients in the burn unit of the Virgen del Rocío Hospital. In total, eighteen people have already benefited from this treatment.
