Lions burn unit: Healing wounds for 35 years

Friday, March 21, 2003 | 3:21 a.m.

For more information about the Burn Survivors of Southern Nevada call UMC at 383-2274 or attend a meeting at 6:30 p.m. on the second Thursday of each month at 2040 W. Charleston Blvd., next door to UMC.

Send checks payable to the "UMC Lions Burn Unit" to the Las Vegas Breakfasters Lions Club, c/o Rose and Al Magnuson, 231 Longacres Drive, Henderson, NV 89015.

WEEKEND EDITION: March 22, 2003

A year ago Travis Carter was using an acetylene torch to cut down a sign 30 feet above the ground when the structure snapped and caused the flame to turn on him, leaving third-degree burns over 20 percent of his body.

Like thousands of others who have suffered critical burns over the past 35 years, Carter's life and recovery became the responsibility of the University Medical Center Lions Burn Care Center.

"I really didn't know anything about the burn center, but looking back, I'm glad it was close by," said the 10-year Las Vegas resident who suffered nearly fatal chest burns on March 19, 2002. "Healing from injuries like mine are slow. I've had four operations and I still have a long way to go."

The burn center opened in 1968, but it remains the only one of its kind in the state. It is the only burn center in a 10,000-square-mile radius, serving parts of Arizona, California and Utah.

The burn unit, like the UMC Trauma Center, not only provides vital services but also helps fulfill the hospital's mission statement to offer treatment not available at other hospitals in the Las Vegas Valley.

Its growth has been steady and significant. Last year the Lions burn unit saw 1,720 inpatients and outpatients, about 100 more than the previous year. In 1998 the unit treated 1,334 inpatients and outpatients. In 1976 the facility saw 652 inpatients and outpatients.

And while the county-owned hospital struggles with well-publicized financial problems, the burn center is coming off what officials describe as a good year for its bottom line.

"We've had some difficult years, but this past year, about 75 percent of our burn inpatients had insurance and our outpatients were somewhat higher," Judith Hollett, clinical manager of the UMC Trauma Intensive Care Unit, said.

"It is important to remember that with burns it's not just the initial injury that is treated, but rather a long process with skin grafts, scar revisions, physical therapy, occupational therapy, special dietary needs. It's not like general surgery."

Dr. Terry Lewis has been a physician at the burn unit since 1984 and, for three years before that, was a resident. He has seen many significant changes in how burns are treated.

"Since the 1960s, when a number of burn patients were lost to shock, we've learned how to keep them alive by how we now treat for shock," he said. "Now infections are our biggest challenge.

"Doing skin grafts to get new skin over the affected area is vital to fighting off infection. In the last 15 years there have been big advancements in new (artificial) skin that is more pliable and prevents heavy scar tissue."

The new skin used on Carter and other patients is a combination of shark cartilage and cow collagen covered by silicone. When the silicone is removed, a new epidermal layer is formed as human collagen blends with the synthetic product to form a more elastic layer, similar to natural human skin.

Also, state-of-the-art equipment has improved the way damaged skin is removed from patients to prevent infection. Funds to purchase much of that equipment has come from various Lions Club chapters. Without those purchases, Hollett said, the taxpayer-supported general hospital budget undoubtedly would have had to have been tapped to buy necessary equipment.

"We tried to figure out how much money we have spent on the burn unit over the years, but because records were not well kept in the early days, we just don't know the exact amount," said past Lions Council Chairman Al Magnuson, who today is a member of the Las Vegas Breakfasters Lions Club, of which his wife, Rose, is president.

"Our recent records show that in 2001 and 2002 we spent $200,000 on new and replacement equipment for the burn unit. Our estimates are that we've spent about $500,000 for equipment in the last 35 years. And that sure has helped a lot of people. The burn unit is a great source of pride for the Lions locally, nationally and internationally."

When the burn unit opened, Las Vegas had a population of about 250,000. It was the 24th such unit in the nation. Dr. John Batdorf and the late Dr. Kirk Cammack, the burn unit's founding physicians, spent years studying procedures used in other burn units before opening the Las Vegas center.

"It was difficult at first because there were politics to overcome and critics who questioned the need," said Batdorf, who served as burn unit director from 1968 to 1981 and worked in the unit until his retirement in 1987.

"But after we opened, doctors from UCLA and other hospitals came to see it to pattern their facilities after ours. People don't realize today that there are few facilities like ours. They take for granted that this type of facility has always been there. That is not the case."

Batdorf oversaw the treatment of a number of the hundreds of people injured in the November 1980 fire at the MGM Grand, now Bally's, that killed 87 and the February 1981 Las Vegas Hilton fire that killed eight.

But, he says, those were not the sternest tests for the burn center. That dubious honor, he says, goes to the explosion of a steam pipe at the Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin in June 1985 that killed four and injured 10. Lewis, who worked alongside Batdorf in the 1980s, concurs.

"Several victims arrived here by helicopter and some of them died right away," Lewis said. "Their injuries were just so overwhelming."

Batdorf said the external burns were horrible, "but the steam was worse. It just burned their lungs."

The roots of the Lions burn unit date back more than a half century and are traced to one pioneering family that endured the tragedy of a fatally burned child.

In 1951, 7-year-old Ann Underhill was watching a magician perform with fire on the then-new medium of television. To duplicate the tricks she struck a match. The flame caught her dress on fire and quickly burned her torso. Her family's home was within a block of UMC, then called Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital, but the medical equipment in those days could not properly treat the severity of her injuries.

"I walked into the room at the hospital where Ann was being treated and she cried, 'Daddy, don't blame Mommy for this -- she warned me not to play with matches,' " said 85-year-old Byron Underhill, a retired vice president of the old Desert Coca-Cola Bottling Co., a franchise that his father, Edward Underhill, founded in Nevada in 1925.

"The closest burn unit in those days was in Houston, but the doctors told my wife and I that Ann would not be able to make that trip because she was burned too bad. She died that December."

When Underhill became president of the now-defunct 49ers Lions Club in 1964, he initiated the fund-raiser to start the burn center at UMC -- a plan that won the support of the Lions Interclub Council -- and in four years raised $80,000 for startup costs.

Today a small plaque recognizing the inspiration of Ann Underhill greets patients in the lobby of the burn unit.

"It was devastating for my late wife and I, but in time we saw the lives that were saved because of the Lions Burn Center and we were real proud that Ann didn't die in vain," Underhill said. "Sometimes you need something real bad to happen so that something real good can come out of it."

Plans are to one day build a new and bigger Lions Burn Care Center as the population continues to grow. Estimates from the state's demographer indicate that Clark County's population will hit 2 million by 2010. By 2018 that figure is expected to climb to 2.7 million, which would be a 125 percent increase over the 1997 population of 1.2 million.

And while the future of the burn unit will explore and undoubtedly help pioneer new ways to treat the physical wounds caused by burns, the hospital has long recognized that there is a great need to treat patients' long-term emotional scars. To that end, a burn support group was started in 1989.

"The main message we try to get across to victims and their families is that they are not alone," said Kacy Kimball, spokeswoman for the Burn Survivors of Southern Nevada that meets monthly.

Kimball, who lost a leg and an arm in a home explosion four years ago and spent two months recovering in the Lions burn unit, talks to burn patients and tries to reassure them that they can still achieve many of their dreams.

"We tell them that there is life after trauma, and you do the most with what you have," she said. "It's a start."

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