Heparin Use in Perm, Russia Night Club Fire Thermal Disaster

SBI has consistently responded to Thermal Disaster events worldwide for 13 years. Information and assistance is offered. Four of SBI’s response offers were successful – in Mexico, Russia and two in India. Heparin alone or heparin in collagen membranes was beneficially added to the treatment.

SBI provides heparin-treatment information to the disaster-site doctors.  Heparin in burn studies, photographs, references, and the Heparin Protocol are routinely sent.  SBI also offers the free services of 2 burn doctors, who can arrive within 4-24 hours, to assist in the treatment of burned patients.  Heparin sprayed onto the burns and into burn blisters uniquely provides prompt cost-effectively relief of pain and initiates therapy immediately. There currently exists no other therapy that is as good for the initial treatment of burned patients in a thermal disaster.  

Even so, most of the SBI offers in the past were not acted upon by the doctors involved, and heparin was not utilized. Doctors in an emergency, are understandably unwilling to utilize any new treatment that they have not previously learned or had experience using.  Therefore information about this treatment must be given to doctors and the public prior to the need.  Importantly, an informed Public can encourage their doctors to obtain information and training using heparin prior to being burned.  

The e-mails exchanged at first (Breaking T-V News) report of the recent Perm Russia fire disaster event reveals the efficient working of SBI’s global network between SBI Headquarters and SBI-associated Burn doctors worldwide.

E-mail, December 07, 2009. 8:58 pm from Dr. Saliba to Dr. Oxsana Dmitrienko in St. Petersburg Russia:

Subject: Contact you. Re: Perm Russia Night Club Fire Treatment with Heparin. Importance: High.

Dear Dr. Dmitrienko,

Let us start again to work together. Heparin would be helpful for burned patients in the Perm Russia Thermal Disaster. The treatment is much needed now.

Drs KM Ramakrishnan and V. Jayaraman in Chennai India have used collagen membranes with topical heparin in burned individuals and the many persons burned in thermal disasters, and the results are impressive.

In fact, the India Government supplies collagen-heparin membranes to doctors for that use. And it has been successfully used in two fire thermal disasters in India – in a Children School and on a train. 

E-mail: Same hour, Subject and Importance from Dr. Saliba to Drs Ramakrishnan, Jayaraman, and Babu, Chennai India:

Dear Drs Ramakrishnan, Jayaraman and Babu,

There is current need in Perm Russia, for which we have a workable solution, as briefly stated in SBI e-mail to Dr. Oxsana Dmitrienko. Check the internet for details.

Our work could set the pattern of India selling (sending) airplane shipments of collagen-heparin membranes with heparin supplies to sites of thermal disasters worldwide, which SBI would cooperate to facilitate. 

Let us initiate discussion.  Dr. Mary Babu and the Indian Collagen Industry may well be interested. We should contact Russian and Indian officials.

Dr. Dmitrienko has contacts within the Russian Government and medical community. She was the Secretariat of the First American-Russian International Burn Meeting in St. Petersburg and Moscow. 

In India, it is a task I would hope you could achieve as you have a history of cooperation with India officials in Thermal Disasters, I believe.

An International Thermal Disaster Meeting is long overdue.  And a presentation in the upcoming Indian National Plastic and Bun Meeting is one possibility perhaps. You will have whatever assistance you need from SBI to the extent possible, as the recession has limited but not impeded our global work.

E-mail reply: Ramakrishnan to Saliba, within 48 hours:

Dear Dr. Saliba,

Regarding the Russian night club fire, I enquired at our embassy (India and Russia have a very amicable friendship) and was told that the collagen membrane have reached the site already.  The company who sells the product (EUCARE) have already advised them regarding topical spray with Heparin. Even though Dr. Oksana Dmitrienko did not contact already me, She would have been already appraised. But I heard that most of the cases were fatal.

 I am going to Istanbul in the coming June. Dr. Mary and I are putting a paper on incorporating Heparin in collagen dressings. Hope you also are coming. The meeting in India is only a state level meeting and not a national event (so) we may not be attending.

Prof. K Mathangi Ramakrishnan, FRCS, MCh, DSc.

Director, Pediatric Burn Intensive Care Unit

Kanchi Kamakoti CHILDS Trust Hospital, Chennai India.

 Heparin should be standard protocol for thermal disasters, especially where there is a need for immediate care at the site.

Recent thermal disasters involving civilians occurred on a crowded Egyptian train, in a massive fireworks explosion in Lima, Peru, and in nightspots in Holland, Manila, and Bali. Peacetime nuclear thermal disasters can occur, as one did at Chernobyl in the 1980s. In the event of nuclear war, heparin therapy may be able to save tens of thousands of lives. Examples of disasters involving the military include the bombing of the USS Cole and the explosion in Beirut that resulted in 250 casualties.

The Saliba Burns Institute has researched and developed a simple, effective and inexpensive medical treatment for burns using the common medicine heparin and dry, sterile bandages. Heparin treatment, initiated at the site of the disaster, can increase survival rates. Heparin enhances healing and minimizes scars. Unlike morphine, heparin does not depress mental or physical functions. With heparin use, burn pain is relieved and burn victims are awake and alert, breathing and eating functions are not suppressed, and the threat of developing an addiction to narcotics is avoided.

For military burn casualties, the use of heparin preserves some ability to perform military duties, which could be a critical factor in the outcome of a conflict. For civilian disaster use, SBI plans to introduce and place this treatment into cruise ships, airplanes and resorts. You may want to bring this therapy to the attention of those businesses.