You’ve seen pictures of burn victims, maybe you know one. The scarring can be horrendous, but CIMMED and Rapidform XOS are working to make those debilitating scars a thing of the past. Steve Kidd, President of CimMed spoke about using Rapidform XOS for creating burn masks to help burn victims heal more quickly and with less severe scarring.

Burn masks should fit closely to a patient’s burned face to help constrain the scar tissue growth, and keep moisture and medications on the wound. It is critical to get a good fit, and historically the process of fitting has been painful and time consuming at a critical time in the patient’s treatment, as staff are performing triage, hydrating the patient, etc. The old method involved taking an impression of the face using that material the dentist uses on your teeth. This required anesthetizing the patient, and took about 10 hours of OR staff and technician time. There had to be a better way.

There is! CimMed has developed a process to get the data quickly, and without touching the patient, risking further trauma and infection. CIMmed trains the nursing staff to operate the Handyscan scanner from Creaform to scan a burn patient, then uses Rapidform XOS to create a useable dataset from which a mold is machined. A bio-compatible material is molded into the shape of the patient’s face, and delivered to the hospital. Outcomes have improved as the tight fit constrains the scar tissue to remain thinner and more like the original skin, while the medication inhibits infection and keeps the new tissue moist and pliable. For more information contact www.cimmed.com