BOSTON -- New advances in burn care are giving hope to the surviving victims of the Feb. 21 fire at a Rhode Island nightclub.

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Techniques Help Victims

NewsCenter 5's Heather Unruh reported that burn care used to be focused on alleviating pain, but recent advances have increased burn patients' chances of survival.

"The biggest killer of burn patients is infection, and the quicker you can cover burn wounds the more able we are at preventing infections and, therefore, any complications from that," said Jane Mulligan, of Shriners Burns Hospital.

The skin bank at Shriners Burns Hospital has 60 square feet of cryogenically preserved cadaver skin that awaits burn victims in need. The thin sheets of skin are being surgically attached to patients at Shriners and Massachusetts General Hospital.

"The skin, once it's transplanted, acts like the patient's own skin," skin bank supervisor Phil Walter said. "Essentially, it becomes a part of the patient."

Together with Integra, an artificial skin patch developed using Shriners technology, they provide temporary but urgent protection.

"It allows the moisture of any drainage to come out, but it doesn't really allow infection to get to it, and it gives us the time we need so that we can graft the patients with their own skin," Mulligan said.

Grafting skin from someone with burns over 75 percent of the body takes time. Skin needs 10 days to heal before grafts can be taken from the same area.

Once their wounds have healed, patients with the most severe facial injuries will be scanned for a mask. Laser painlessly create an exact replica of the face in 15 seconds.

Intricate details help create a pressure mask burn patients will wear 23 hours a day for up to a year and a half.

"What it does is provide precise pressure over the burn scars so that the scars will stay flat as they're healing, and they'll stay soft as they're healing," said Mary Jo Baryza, of Shriners Hospital.

Although the mask is not easy to wear, it helps minimize the scarring.