Shriners Burn
Hospital
Boston, Mass |
Since the 1960s,
when the Shrine opened its first three Shriners
Hospitals dedicated to treating burns, a child's
chance of surviving a severe burn has nearly
doubled. From a time when a child with a burn
over 50 percent of his body had only a 50 percent
chance of surviving, today the benchmark is
that a child with a 98 percent burn has a 50
percent chance of surviving. Of the major advances
in the treatment of burned children in the last
20 years, fully half have been direct results
of the activities at Shriners Hospitals.
The Boston Hospital has been
actively engaged in clinical and basic research
since its opening. Its research findings have
resulted in improved surgical treatment of the
burn wound, the development of effective skin
banks; better infection control; and alternative
wound covering materials and strategies. One
well-publicized achievement of the Boston Hospital
is the cultured-cells technology pioneered by
the Boston Hospital in collaboration with Harvard
Medical School. Researchers developed a method
of growing skin from a tiny sample of a burn
patient's own skin. In 1982, in a celebrated
case, the Boston Unit used cultured skin to
save the lives of two boys who were burned over
97 percent of their body surface area. This
represented the first-ever use of cultured skin
in covering a massive burn wound. It was also
the first time any human being had been known
to survive such a severe burn injury.
