NEW ORLEANS -- Every two hours, someone dies from a burn injury in the U.S., yet there are only 1,900 hospital beds in the country dedicated to treat burn patients.
But now, 20 more have been added in New Orleans.
Charity Hospital had a burn center in the 1970s, but New Orleans has been without one ever since. Now, the new center at University Medical Center becomes one of only 49 in the country with combined trauma and burn specialties.
It's a state-of-the-art hospital within a hospital. The new UMC Burn-Trauma Center only opened its doors three weeks ago and already has admitted 30 patients. Doctors are expecting to treat at least 200 patients a year.
"Last year we had to transfer over 300 patients out of the state because there were no beds available to treat them," said Dr. Jeffrey Carter, the Medical Director of the UMC Burn Center and an associate professor of Surgery at LSUHSC.
No longer will patients need to be flown to Houston, Mobile, Baton Rouge or Lafayette. And with the region's only Level I Trauma Center in the same building, critical patients with burns and any other kind of trauma will have specialists for all needs.
"We treat all forms of thermal injury, meaning both hot and cold, chemical injuries and electrical injuries, inhalation injuries, which can happen with smoke inhalation with no burn on the outside," Dr. Carter explained.
The treatment is comprehensive with physicians, wound care nurses and a team of psychologists, physical and occupational therapists, social workers, case managers, pharmacists and nutritionists. There are also reconstructive surgeons. And there will be public prevention programs and special training for paramedics and firefighters.
"As Dr. Carter has related to us, it actually starts, the burn treatment actually starts with the rescue and continues through to the hospital," said Jefferson Parish Fire Chief Dave Tibbetts.
Eight years ago today, those injured in the BP Oil Spill and blast would have been brought to the new burn center.
"One of the things that we learned with the Deepwater Horizon incident, was that we needed to have a hospital that was close to where a lot of these injuries do occur, that could take care of someone who had both a burn injury and a traumatic injury. And that we need to keep people in our state, not make the families have to travel to far away distances," Dr. Carter added.
The new burn center will also work with Shriners Hospitals for burned children.
And the new burn center is also getting clinical trials of the latest treatments that are being studied.
One, not yet FDA approved, is spray-on skin technology that, grows new skin, and for some patients, looks like it was never burned.