Ealing woman who suffered gunshot to the face helps launch pioneering scar treatment campaign

An Ealing woman who was once shot once at close range has helped launch a campaign to achieve scar-free healing.

A major medical research campaign to improve wound healing within a generation was launched on Tuesday (July 19) and was hailed "as important as the discovery of antibiotics".

The UK-led initiative by Scar Free Foundation hopes to have achieved scar-free healing within 30 years to help people with military injuries, burns, surgery and scar-related diseases of major organs.

The campaign has used Ealing's Lottie Pollak as a case study, who has thrown her support behind the initiative.

She has a scar on her neck as a result of a benign tumour and has had scarring on her face for 13 years due to an assault where she was shot at close range with a gun.

The 51-year-old, an ambassador of Scar Free Foundation, said: "I have had a tumour in my right neck since I was 28, which was taken out again last year, and the other side of my face I was a victim of an assault and I was shot at short range in 2003.

"My scars are in a difficult place on the face where there are a lot of nerves and vessels.

"It would be nice not to have scars and the memories that you have associated with them, how they affect you and the people in your life."

'A medical revolution'

She added: "Scar Free healing is really exciting. The £1.3 billion we spend on hard-to-heal wounds would be far less if we understand wound healing and the money saved would be spent elsewhere on the NHS.

"If you have scars it changes the way you function. For me it changed the way I eat and what I eat because I cannot open my mouth wide enough."

Lottie says she believes the tissue around my face would have healed like normal tissue under the new treatment.

The Scar Free Foundation, a national charity directing world leading medical research into wound healing, scarring and the psychological effects of disfigurement, aims to change the lives of those living with scars.

It is the only organisation in the world offering the collaboration and funding necessary to deliver scar-free healing.

The charity aims to raise £24m within the next five years to start an international programme of work.

Simon Withey, consultant plastic surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital London, today said: "It is a programme of research working towards a medical revolution which is as important as the discovery of antibiotics or the development of modern anesthetics."