> In the US, animal-based skin substitutes require levels of scrutiny from the Food and Drug Administration and animal rights groups that can drive up costs, Lee said. Given the substantial supply of donated human skin, tilapia skin is unlikely to arrive at American hospitals anytime soon.
This reminds me of Milton Friedman’s arguments against the FDA.
It's old news. There is even “And Dream of Sheep” — Grey’s Anatomy, Season 15 Episode 17.
That’s the episode where they mention using tilapia fish skin to treat burns.
Original U.S. air date: March 14, 2019.
This has been going for long enough that there's been several metastudies debunking it. Was hyped in the news around 2017.
Fish skin or silver sulfadiazine had similar effects and to me are both approximating placebo from the studies I read. The fish does nothing for pain and no difference in the scarring time vs the silver ointments.
Totally anecdotal but I had a bad burn on my foot and I thought I could manage it with otc stuff. It kept getting worse so I went to have it checked out and was prescribed the silver cream.
From one day to the next it started showing positive effects and a week and a half later I was fine. I was kicking myself for waiting so long.
I thought this a pretty mature technique? I have seen more than once our local vet using this technique to treat cats with large wounds -- with great results by the way. Interestingly, they too used tilapia fish skin, and not any of the more common local fish species. I wonder if there is something special about tilapia fish skin, or it was simply the species on which the technique was developed, and nobody bothered to try using other fish species.
>I have seen more than once our local vet using this technique to treat cats with large wounds -- with great results by the way.
I'm not surprised, a lot of vets I know from Iraq and Afghanistan had used Tilapias for battlefield dressing. Worst case there was a Tilapia MRE people kept around for this purpose. Honestly it's great to see them taking those skills from war and translating them into helping street animals such as cats.
There is an Icelandic company called Kerecis that produces these kinds of fish skin based grafts. There are some videos of some of their patient's before and after over at their webpage[0] but be warned, they might be a bit graphic for some.
In Chinese villages, I've seen them use fish skin, potato skin, various leaves, cooked birds nest, fish fin oil, and etc to treat open wounds instead of pure bandaging.
While it's not a new technique, it's fascinating for this area to be further explored.
The fact that tilapia skin was basically waste, yet turns out to have higher collagen content, better tensile strength, and better moisture retention than human skin is kind of remarkable
This is quite old news. I've heard about this more than 10 years ago at least.
It has been fairly successful since the beginning and I've heard it improved quite a lot
In my hospital we have ample experience with another technique using polypropylene sheets for defect coverage, popularized in Brazil orthopedics as "Figueiredo's technique", which is in practice an extension of common techinques for temporary closure of abdominal wall ("Bogota's bag").
We put a transparent polypropylene sheet as skin replacement, suture it directly to the skin. We can monitor the wound and its secretions, can cover exposed tendons and bones without immediate doing microsurgical flaps. For example, we can monitor the second intention skin closure with reduced infection and analgesics use, sometimes without needing a graft at all.
I think one of the most interesting techniques for burn victims is using placentas. I haven't seen it too much in my current hospital system, but have seen it talked about at medical association conferences and think it's pretty exciting.
Here is a gift link for an article about them in the New York Times from about a year ago.
My nephew had multiple heart surgery, and after the last one, he kept having the wound release liquids. For months, they just medicated the wound regularly hoping it would solve by itself. At last, they decided for a cleaning surgery, and a pediatric specialist came from Rome and apparently brought something like "fish sheets" to "cover the wound while it heals.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 44.4 ms ] threadThis reminds me of Milton Friedman’s arguments against the FDA.
https://the-good-doctor.fandom.com/wiki/Not_Fake
Fish skin or silver sulfadiazine had similar effects and to me are both approximating placebo from the studies I read. The fish does nothing for pain and no difference in the scarring time vs the silver ointments.
From one day to the next it started showing positive effects and a week and a half later I was fine. I was kicking myself for waiting so long.
I'm not surprised, a lot of vets I know from Iraq and Afghanistan had used Tilapias for battlefield dressing. Worst case there was a Tilapia MRE people kept around for this purpose. Honestly it's great to see them taking those skills from war and translating them into helping street animals such as cats.
Its a fantastic substitute for bandages in the sense that you don't need to take off the fish skin everyday.
Its also better are retaining moisture in the burn wounds than cotton badages.
No need for antibiotics, painkillers etc
Its also really cheap. Fish farms regard them as waste.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14385336
[0]: https://kerecis.com
Still, an interesting read
While it's not a new technique, it's fascinating for this area to be further explored.
We put a transparent polypropylene sheet as skin replacement, suture it directly to the skin. We can monitor the wound and its secretions, can cover exposed tendons and bones without immediate doing microsurgical flaps. For example, we can monitor the second intention skin closure with reduced infection and analgesics use, sometimes without needing a graft at all.
Here is a gift link for an article about them in the New York Times from about a year ago.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/well/placenta-donations-b...