A pioneering north east hospital has become one of the first in the country to slash the number of burns victims needing operations. The Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne has managed to reduce the number of procedures by 30% after investing £38,000 in a state-of-the-art Laser Doppler Imager (LDI), developed by staff of the Regional Medical Physics Department.
The LDI provides a non-invasive method of measuring skin blood flow to assess the depth of burns and is almost 100% accurate. Consultant plastic surgeon, Dr. Sarah Pape, of the hospitals' Burns Unit said the machine was already saving money in the long term and sparing patients from unnecessary treatment. Mrs. Pape said. "We have reduced the number of patients needing skin grafts by nearly a third and this is good for patients. It has also resulted in more appropriate decision making, less scarring and shorter hospital stays for patients, as well as reduced workloads and costs".
The machine works by running a low energy beam over the skin which gives a picture of the burn, looking like a thermal image. A red, warm image means the blood flow is high and the burn is superficial and doesn't need surgery. A cold, blue image, on the other hand, indicates low blood levels and a deep burn. Mrs. Pape explained "We are confident that all our patients who have had surgery since we've got the machine genuinely need it. We have been using the technique clinically since 1997 and have the largest clinical experience in the world. The accuracy is 97% compared to 60% to 70% it used to be. In particularly we have been able to show that even experienced clinicians may over estimate the depth of burns. My accuracy is 73% and I've been assessing burns for 14 years".
The hospital is only one of a handful of hospitals in the UK to have the machine. But Mrs. Pape believes it should be routinely available on the NHS benefiting thousands of burns victims and eventually saving costs. At Newcastle alone 200 patients benefit from LDI ever year.
Regional Medical Physics Department, Freeman Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE7 7DN, UK.
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Regional Medical Physics Department, a Clinical Directorate of the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
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