do doctors use fish skin on burn victims

#Do doctors use fish skin on burn victims how to#

The fish skin is never removed from the patient.' The healthy cells from the wound perimeter will then crawl into the fish skin and over time convert it to human skin. We only produce the fish skin-wound dressings from any vendor can be applied on top. 'The fish skin is then inserted into the wound and a wound dressing applied on top of the fish-skin. She inspects the wound and with a knife cuts away all dead tissue and makes the wound red and bleeding,' Gudmundur Fertram Sigurjonsson, founder, president and CEO of Keracis, told Newsweek. 'The fish skin is used in the following manner: The doctor receives our fish-skin in sterile packaging. Kerecis' Omega3 SurgiBind is grafted onto burned or otherwise damaged human skin, whereupon healthy human cells slowly grow across the fish skin, healing the wound beneath. Courtesy of National Library of Medicine Appearance of the dressing on the wound the sixth day of treatment. Skin of a tilapia fish was applied to a burn patient's arms in Brazil in 2019. It is using skin from Atlantic cod for burn wounds, in the first FDA-approved form of this treatment. Now Kerecis, an Icelandic biotechnology company, thinks it has the answer.

#Do doctors use fish skin on burn victims how to#

While researchers around the world have been investigating how to use fish skin to treat burn victims, the question has been which species is best for the job, with some scientists using tilapia. Their hope is that it will provide a cheaper and better treatment, as well as relieve pain. The fish skin also prevents immune rejection and disease transfer, which are both issues involved with skin grafts from cadavers or animals such as pigs.īucking traditional treatments of cold compresses, doctors have started using an unexpected marine material to treat nasty burns: fish skin.Icelandic biotechnology company Kerecis has developed an FDA-approved cod-skin treatment that can speed up burn healing and reduce patient pain.Skin from cod and tilapia is being used to treat burns and other skin damage.When they were removed after 11 days using petroleum jelly, the wounds look incredible compared to the ones with traditional wrappings. The fish skin grafts were also replaced many times to restore the damaged tissue. Tilapia’s skins were left on da Silva’s burn areas for 11 days and longer on her hands, before being removed since the wounds were deeper. “But I jumped at the chance because they said it would be far less painful than the normal treatment and easier to manage.” “When doctors suggested putting fish skin on my wounds I found the idea really strange. “I was in absolute agony and desperate for anything to ease my suffering. “The explosion left me with horrific injuries. Maria Ines, 36, who was a waitress in the Casa Velha restaurant in Russas, Brazil at the time of the accident said: She was offered an alternative therapy to the conventional burn cream ones her wounds were to be covered with the skin of a Tilapia fish. In an incident of cooker canister explosion, Maria Ines Candido da Silva suffered from second-degree burns on her arms, neck, and face.

The skins can also be stored in refrigerated banks in Sao Paulo in pieces of 10cm by 20cm for up to two years without a hitch. The skin, which is closer to human skin and is flexible is then stretched and laminated around the wound. It is also ensured that any fishy smell is removed before the medical use. The fish skin is put through a rigorous process of removal of scale, muscle tissue, and toxins to eliminate any possibility of disease transfusion. The skin from Tilapia fish was used since it is found to be a disease-resistant species readily found in Brazilian rivers. This pioneering new therapy has significantly reduced the burn trauma and considerably speeds up the healing process.įish scales have been used for the first time as a band-aid to treat lesions, and according to the doctors, they cost half the price of burn medicines. It looks like Tilapia is tipping the scale in the treatments of burn victims! For the first time anywhere in the medical world, Brazilian doctors have started to use the skin of tropical fish Tilapia to treat burn victims.