Lisa Isaacs
STELLENBOSCH University and Tygerberg Hospital have developed a life-saving and low-cost way to harvest and grow skin for burn victims.
The innovation means that the R1.8 million price tag for skin grafts can drop to about R1 000, after a team of doctors at the hospital and university, spearheaded by Wayne Kleintjes, head of the adult burns unit at Tygerberg, developed the method.
Yesterday, Kleintjes said he had developed the technique that grows skin harvested from a patient in an incubator. Certain products used for the method’s skin culturing have not previously been used for this purpose – making it a world first, although Kleintjes was mum on further details as he waited for the project to be patented.
He said after a few weeks, the skin could be used on the patient.
“Up to now, the outlook for patients in South Africa who had suffered extensive burns was rather bleak. The current conventional treatment methods range from rudimentary management of pain and discomfort to highly specialised transplant techniques.
“If they survive, patients faced long and excruciating stays in hospital ICU units with mixed results at the end of the intensive treatment,” said Health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo.
“The availability of this new technique has challenged the way we assess a serious burn victim’s prognosis. Now we can offer life-saving, viable and affordable treatment, making the previously bleak outlook much brighter.”
The procedure has been performed on two burn victims so far, with great success.
The first patient, a 16-year-old boy, had burns on 40 percent of his body after his home was petrol-bombed. He was in ICU for three months with no improvement.
“I just knew that we needed a special intervention to save the boy. Even though fund-raising had been planned with the family to secure the funding for an epicel cultured epidermal autograft transplant, as Pippie Kruger had, there was an import ban placed on the product. Thus the only way out was to make a plan ourselves,” said Dr Kleintjes.
Pippie sustained massive third-degree burns when a firelighter exploded in her father’s hands on New Year’s Eve in 2012 on the family’s Limpopo farm. She underwent pioneering surgery where her own cloned skin, grown in a US lab in Boston, was transplanted on to her in a first for South Africa.
Kleintjes said the team took a skin biopsy from the boy and grew it in the incubator, 14 days later they covered his body with his own skin.
Within a week, he was out of bed and discharged from the ICU within two weeks.
Once the first procedure was successful, a second patient was treated in February this year.
The 54-year-old man had burns on 63 percent of his body, and had a slim chance of survival.
Kleintjes said the man was burnt while working under a car.
The man was out of ICU four weeks later and is recovering in a general ward.
Provincial health department head Beth Engelbrecht said: “Once the project gains momentum it could be introduced as part of the normal provincial protocol, and could be shared with other provinces and the private sector.”