HJBR Jul/Aug 2026

Q&A 38 JUL / AUG 2026 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE   problemwith that again. And so, I’ve always liked the concept of trying to have a defini- tive fix for a medical problem. Editor How did you get involved with burn surgery? Littleton I had very little experience in burn in medical school or residency and when I finished my training — I trained at LSU in New Orleans at the big Charity Hospi- tal System — and when I finished, I started practice with Drs. Mencer and Patin, who had been in private practice general surgery for several years — a couple of decades by the time I joined them. The two of them had been practicing general surgery and burn surgery for years, so when I started in their practice, I was kind of mentored by them in the field of burn surgery. I effectively did a mini burn fellowship for the first one or two years of my practice and then started treat- ing burn patients myself thereafter. I’ve been in practice since 2000, which is 26 years this summer. I really enjoy treating burn patients as well. Obviously, burn injuries can be subtle and minor and they can be catastrophic as well and everything in between and I enjoy the honor of being able to treat patients and their families with these injuries and trying to get them on the road to recovery physi- cally and psychologically and emotionally. Editor I would imagine as a burn surgeon, you’re dealing with patients who are hav- ing some of the most painful and traumatic moments of their life. How does that affect you as a physician and as a person? Littleton Well, there’s certainly times when you get very close to patients and their fami- lies and it can be emotionally taxing. What I have to do as a provider is to learn to be empathetic and sympathetic to their plight and the plight of their families and what have you, and make sure that I always put the patient and their care first and foremost when it comes to making treatment deci- sions and recommendations, whether it be burn or general surgery cases. But it’s diffi- cult at times and heartfelt and emotionally taxing when you have to deal with some- one who’s critically ill or has cancer or what have you. And those things are difficult to talk about — but necessary to talk about, and necessary to treat in order to try to get patients to some level of comfort and improvement in well-being in their healthcare. Editor Is there something in the category of dealing with burn patients that excites you today? Like a new breakthrough? Littleton Yeah, that’s constantly changing . . . there’s always some new product on the market. We have dermal — dermis is the base of the layer of the skin — dermal replacement products that we can kind of use off the shelf. We also have some- thing called RECELL epidermal autograft- ing, which is a technique by where we can take a very small piece of skin and put it in the specialized solution and separate off the epidermal cells — the skin cells — and put them in solution and spray it back onto a patient’s wounds and they can have the potential to heal those wounds without nec- essarily needing a large-scale, full-scale skin graft — that is something relatively new over the last several years that is really kind of revolutionizing the field. Editor Baton Rouge General has a long his- tory in burn care. What should the com- munity understand about burn care that