SKIN pH VARIATIONS FROM THE ACUTE PHASE TO RE-EPITHELIALIZATION IN BURN PATIENTS TREATED WITH NEW MATERIALS (BURNSHIELD®, SEMIPERMEABLE ADHESIVE FILM, DERMASILK®, AND HYALOMATRIX®). NON-INVASIVE PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENTAL CLINICAL TRIAL

Under normal conditions, the skin has a mean pH of 5.5, kept constant by the skin’s pH regulating barrier function. Variations tending towards higher or lower values are rapidly brought into line with the base value. This barrier function is efficacious at the age intervals between early infancy (6 months to 1 year) and advancing age (65-70 years). Prior to this interval and subsequent to it, the barrier function does not work rapidly: in newborn infants it is not yet mature and in the elderly it is related to the degree of skin atrophy in course. A pH of 5.5 enables individuals to protect themselves from the multiplication of the germs harboured by humans the majority of pathogenic and saprophytic bacteria survive at a pH that varies between 7.2 and 7.6. The skin’s barrier function consists of cholesterol, ceramids, and free fatty acids. It is common knowledge that firstand second-degree skin burns re-epithelialize in the course of 14 days without leaving scars, while deep secondand thirddegree burns take 30 days to re-epithelialize, often leaving hypertrophic scars and keloids. There are no clinical trials currently available in the literature describing non-invasive methods for measuring the pH of burned skin from the acute phase to complete re-epithelialization. We thus studied new materials (DermaSilk®, semipermeable adhesive film, Hyalomatrix®, Burnshield® hydrogel) and innovative methods (medications without cotton gauze, with active ingredients and semipermeable adhesive film ([SAF]) with a view to treating skin burn patients better and more efficaciously. Patients with deep secondand third-degree burns affecting a limited percentage of the body surface (TBSA < 10-12% in adults, < 7-8% in children) first underwent cooling treatment in the Casualty Unit (cooling for 15 min with physiological solution at 23 °C), after which hydrogel was apSKIN pH VARIATIONS FROM THE ACUTE PHASE TO RE-EPITHELIALIZATION IN BURN PATIENTS TREATED WITH NEW MATERIALS (BURNSHIELD®, SEMIPERMEABLE ADHESIVE FILM, DERMASILK®, AND HYALOMATRIX®). NON-INVASIVE PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENTAL CLINICAL TRIAL