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Hope and Recovery
The David and Nancy Auth-Washington Research Foundation Endowed Chair for Restorat ive Burn Surgery
In the 1970s, David C. Auth, Ph.D., P.E., a physicist, bioengineer, and faculty member in the University of Washington’s Department of Electrical Engineering, invented a laser scalpel for use in burn wound surgery. While the scalpel wasn’t effective in helping burn patients, Auth found working on a project with these patients a moving, educational experience.
“It was my first in-depth exposure to the plight of severely burned people,” says Auth. Patients suffer tremendous pain, he says, but they also must live with the aftermath of burn injury and healing: scarring, disfigurement, and sometimes serious handicaps.
Pioneers in burn surgery
Like David Auth, the UW Medicine Burn Center at Harborview Medical Center has a strong interest in helping patients recover from severe burn wounds. Focused solely on patient care when it was founded, the center has expanded its mission over the past 30 years to educate medical providers and to conduct research into burn surgery.
“There’s no question that Harborview has always been a leader in this field,” says Nicole S. Gibran, M.D., Fel. ’91, the director of the Burn Center.
In the center’s early years, Gibran says, plastic surgeon Loren H. Engrav, M.D., and surgeon David M. Heimbach, M.D., proved that patients with extensive burns benefited from early removal of dead tissue followed by skin grafting. These advances shorten a patient’s hospital stay, reduce the chance of infection, and decrease the number of reconstructive surgeries patients need.
Because of Engrav’s and Heimbach’s work, many more burn victims now survive severe burns. Given improved survival rates, doctors at Harborview increasingly have been interested in a burn patient’s quality of life: how they function, how they look, and how they integrate back into a normal life. “That’s why the Harborview Burn Center is really on the map,” says Gibran.
Quality of life
“Plastic surgery, more than anything else, puts peoples’ lives back together,” says Nicholas B. Vedder, M.D., Res. ’87, Res. ’89, the holder of the Jamie A. Hunter Endowed Professorship in Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and the chief of UW Medicine’s Division of Plastic Surgery.
Putting lives back together after severe burns and other major wounds requires not only surgeons, but also plastic surgeons, nurses, therapists, and social workers, says Vedder. This team shepherds a patient through the long process of surgery, skin grafts, reconstructive surgeries, and physical and occupational therapy.
Matthew B. Klein, Fel. ’04, associate director of the Burn Center and reconstructive surgeon, enjoys this long-term relationship with his patients. Klein did his fellowship at UW Medicine based largely on the Burn Center’s reputation. “I had long known of the fame and tremendous contributions of the UW Burn Center,” says Klein.
What’s more, he says, “It was a Mecca for what I wanted to do.”
Outcomes research
What Klein wanted to do — a continuation of Engrav’s and Heimbach’s groundbreaking work, notes Gibran — was to study and improve patients’ functional outcomes after burn surgery. It’s a process in which Klein is still engaged. He and his colleagues are creating a survey tool to assess burn patient recovery and satisfaction, for instance, and participating in a study that investigates the costs of burn injury to children.
When David Auth — who’d retained his interest in the welfare of burn patients — recently toured the Burn Center, he was introduced to the outcomes research faculty. “I was very impressed with the work going on, especially the work of Dr. Klein,” says Auth. And when Auth decided to make a contribution to outcomes research, the Washington Research Foundation decided to contribute, too.
“We’re proud to follow the lead of outstanding entrepreneur, professor, and deep thinker David Auth,” says Ron Howell, CEO of the Washington Research Foundation. “This gift is consistent with our mission of supporting scholarship and innovation.”
Together, these gifts have created the David and Nancy Auth-Washington Research Foundation Endowed Chair for Restorative Burn Surgery, a fund that will help faculty members conduct outcomes research that will benefit burn patients and other patients with large wounds.
The benefit of the chair
Carlos A. Pellegrini, M.D., chair of the Department of Surgery and holder of the Henry N. Harkins Endowed Chair in Surgery, recognizes the importance of the endowed chair to the Burn Center. “An endowment like this one allows faculty to re-direct their time, so that they can do more research,” says Pellegrini. “I think the chair is a fantastic investment in the future of the UW and the patients we serve,” he says.
Auth’s and WRF’s gifts also pay tribute to faculty members’ talents and responsibilities. Loren Engrav made a point of highlighting those responsibilities to Klein in surgery a few years ago.
“What we do today,” Engrav said to his trainee, “will affect this person for the rest of his life.”
It’s a responsibility that Klein and his colleagues never forget. And it’s a responsibility that will be supported, in perpetuity, by the new chair.
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