5

A World With Less Pain

I think that 3-D bio-printing will inevitably change the world of medicine as we know it. Its most recent application to medical treatment consisted of successfully reproducing a 100 cm x 100 cm sheet of live skin.

That is a pretty significant size, especially when you consider that it only took 35 minutes!

Normally, a skin graft is done by removing a piece of healthy skin from one part of the patients body and rooting it to the area being treated. (The healthy skin attaches to the cells underneath, and begins to grow) This is used to treat severe burns, skin cancer, skin infections, etc. To state it simply, any lacerated or damaged area of skin that is too large to be removed and closed with sutures requires a skin graft.

My Aunt Maria accidentally spilled a pot of fresh, hot coffee on herself when she was only three years old. Luckily, a relatively small area of skin was burned, although very badly burned. The damage ran deep, but they were able to resolve the problem with a skin graft.

In cases like my aunt, where only a small area of skin is in need of grafting, the current skin graft technique will suffice. Removing a small area of skin from the donor site will likely not affect the day to day life of the patient.

On the other hand, full body burns cannot be treated as easily. The patient will probably undergo the process of debridement for a long time. Without a skin transplant from a donor patient, they will remain in the hospital’s burn unit for a long period of time, waiting for their bodies to heal themselves.

If you have ever watched a medical TV show like Grey’s Anatomy, House, or Scrubs, you may have seen an episode involving some huge accident, bringing in a patient whose entire body is covered in burns. If you know what I am talking about then you know that the patient is usually screaming, shaking, and crying from the pain.

The process of debridement is extremely painful in itself. Debridement is the removal of damaged tissue. A burn kills a person’s healthy skin tissue, making the area extremely prone to infections. The dead skin also hardens to form an eschar, which ultimately limits any healthy skin from growing. Because of the risks associated with dead skin on one’s body, it is imperative for a burn victim to undergo surgical debridement immediately. Unfortunately, the freshly burned skin is undoubtedly sensitive, and makes the process even more painful.

The ability to print a sheet of live skin cells could make the treatment much less painful. The access to this technology will allow doctors to cover the raw skin quicker. As a result, the patient’s risk of infection will decrease because their body will have less exposure to the outside environment.

What is even more amazing? The fact that any advancements made in the 3-D printing of skin can be used to advance the printing of other vital organs like hearts, livers, and kidneys. (All three at a very high demand for transplant)

A world in which we can print and replace a person’s dysfunctional organ within a day will be a world with less pain.