Skin growth breakthrough saves lives

A TEAM of South African doctors has made international medical history by devising a cheap and effective way of growing skin for burn victims.

Using an incubator and a small piece of skin graft, they have saved the lives of two burn victims who were on the brink of death.

Wayne Kleintjes, the doctor who developed the technique with his team, said Niels, 16 (not his real name), was severely burnt in a petrol bomb attack and was slowly dying in hospital.

Weighing just 19kg after three months in intensive care, Niels had no hope of survival.

“The option of using the Epicel method [used in the recent case of Pippie Kruger] was not possible as there is now a ban on bringing in skin from another country.”

The Epicel technique cost R1.8-million and in Pippie’s case, relied on a high-tech lab in Boston, Massachusetts. The new technique costs less than R1 000 and is done in a normal hospital room.

“We borrowed two incubators and harvested a 3cm x 7cm skin biopsy from his hip,” Kleintjes said.

The cultivated skin was later grafted onto the body and the patient was able to leave intensive care just two weeks later.

The second victim, a man of 53, came in with 63% of his skin burnt.

He was injured while working under a car when petrol leaked onto him and caught fire from a spark. He had only a 10% chance of survival, but left intensive care four weeks after undergoing the technique.

Kleintjes said the skin was grown in various sessions, each of which took about two weeks. They were done between November and February.

Other skin transplant methods are allografts – using donor skin – and xenografts – using skin from another species, usually a pig. But “both methods are only temporary skin covers and are usually rejected by the recipient after two to four weeks”.

Western Cape Department of Health head Beth Engelbrecht said that on hearing of the plight of the two victims, she was “covered in goosebumps”.

Western Cape Health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo called the technique a bold and groundbreaking innovation.