Creating "skin suits" to help burn-ravaged bodies

Harris treats patients in the seventh-floor unit and outpatients who come in for checkups. She carries a big, black knapsack containing simple tools: swatches of Lycra in black or beige, a measuring tape, pencils, paper, a sewing kit and a tiny brown plush bear wearing pressure garments she made.

She sews "skin suits" for severely burned patients at Toronto's Ross Tilley Burn Centre. The pressure garments control the growth of hypertrophic scars – irregular and exaggerated skin growth that can cause deformities.

Burn patients are missing the dermis layers of skin, which contain a mesh of collagen that applies pressure and stops excess skin from forming. Pressure garments replace the lost dermis, protect the fragile grafts and reduce itching.

"If you get a small cut or a burn, the skin knows how to heal," Harris says. "But in a bad burn, the pressure garment acts like the skin you lost."

About 50 years ago, the idea for a pressure suit came from an engineer with vascular disease who noticed his regular swims in the pool made his condition better, says Harris. So he hired someone to make him a suit to emulate the pressure of the water, and a new mode of therapy was born.