An insight to pioneering burns treatment in Birmingham

19th July 2013

 

The recent launch of The Healing Foundation Birmingham Burns Research Centre at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham on 14 June 2013, reflects the city’s established excellence in this field.

Birmingham is the designated burns centre for both adults and children for the whole of the Midlands. It has a strong multidisciplinary burns team with six burns consultants, the largest consultant body in a burns centre in the UK. This team works across the Birmingham Children’s Hospital and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB). 

QEHB’s Burns Centre operates a skin culture laboratory, which provides cultured cells not only to patients in Birmingham, but also widely across the UK. 

The hospital is a major trauma centre and is home to the Adult Burns Centre and the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, treating all British service personnel who are evacuated for medical treatment.

QEHB shares a close-knit clinical research and education infrastructure with the University of Birmingham, one of Europe’s leading academic research universities, and the two institutions are located on adjoining campuses in the suburb of Edgbaston.

This combination of clinical and research excellence has enabled the development of links with world class institutions outside of Birmingham, including the Royal Free Hospital and University College London, the home to the most sophisticated regenerative nanotechnology development centres in the world.

It is this standing within the world of burns research, underpinned by the hard work and commitment of hundreds of dedicated staff at all levels, which has enabled us to host The Healing Foundation Birmingham Burns Research Centre.

The centre, as a part of the Healing Foundation Burns Collective initiative, which it forms with its sister centre in Bristol, will provide the platform for building a national burns research infrastructure.

The areas of work which need to be addressed are complex and wide-ranging. 

We need to improve our understanding of the systemic physiological impacts of burn injuries, an area of research which could provide new interventions to save lives and reduce long-term scarring and organ damage. The crucial subject of infection is also being addressed, using the immensely promising technology of high-throughput DNA sequencing to rapidly diagnose and track pathogens.

The long-term rehabilitation of burns patients is also vital, and it is in this area that our collaboration with the nanotechnology centre led by Professor Alex Seifalian and Professor Peter Butler at UCL offers great hope. The use of polymer-based dermal scaffolds will transform the lives of some of our patients and promises to open up new opportunities to reduce the impact of scarring on both appearance and function.

Birmingham has established itself as a national and international centre of excellence for burns research and treatment, and we are delighted to have this new opportunity to further expand and improve the care we can offer our patients.

For further information, please visit: www.research.uhb.nhs.uk or www.srmrc.nihr.ac.uk

Naiem Moiemen
BAPRAS Full Member

 

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