Plastic surgeons work on Isabella Krugers scarred arm. Her cloned skin has already been put in place and is covered in gauze.
The bandages will come off little burn patient Isabella “Pippie” Kruger on Monday.
At that stage, plastic surgeon Dr Ridwan Mia will know whether the new skin has taken on the three-year-old’s body, which sustained third-degree burns in a freak accident.
After the plastic surgeon does an assessment on Monday evening, he will bandage Isabella up again and put her in splints and she will stay sedated and on a ventilator.
She will be woken on Tuesday morning, but will still be on a ventilator.
Between Tuesday and Friday, Isabella’s medical team will gradually decrease the sedation and start taking her off the ventilator.
The plan is to have her fully awake by Friday or Saturday.
And here is what the little patients own cloned skin looks like. It was cultivated in the container that the doctor is holding. The skin was put on in layers like a quilt and then, if everything goes according to plan, the blood vessels will grow into the skin and feed it.
“Hopefully the skin has taken, but if… it hasn’t, Genzyme (a cell therapy manufacturer) is on standby to make more skin, as it has kept her biopsy,” said hospital spokeswoman Lynne Zurnamer.
Over time, as the grafted cloned skin grows, it is expected to resemble normal skin.
Isabella’s family had been preparing for a New Year’s Eve braai at their home in Lephalale in Limpopo when the firelighter gel that her father, Erwin, had on a stick, suddenly exploded, engulfing the child in flames.
Isabella is the first person in SA to receive her own cloned skin.
It has been grown in a specialised laboratory in Boston in the US, after two small biopsies of her own healthy skin cells had been sent to the US.
Two 2x6cm samples of healthy skin were then taken from Isabella’s groin, which had been protected from the fire by her nappy, and sent off to the laboratory.
On Monday, the new skin which had grown from her own, was flown in by special courier.
The new skin, which came in sheets, was positioned on the little girl’s scarred body in layers, almost like a patchwork quilt.
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