alt Hacker NewsDoctors in Brazil using tilapia fish skin to treat burn victims
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They used this exact treatment in an episode of The Good Doctor, S01E06. Original air date: October 30, 2017
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.
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 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.
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.
They did this in the Netflix One Piece series (with a yellowtail though)
They do this in Iceland too
This article is from 2017 - maybe should say so in the submission title?
Still, an interesting read
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
TLDR;
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.
I'm pretty sure they've done this for decades. I seem to remember someone using potato skins like 30 years ago.
(2017)
Will never be approved by the US FDA since it can't be patented.
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.
i saw that episode of one-piece
> 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.
I've read Dune - I know exactly where this is going. Please do not apply sand trout directly to you skin unless you are ready to control the spice.
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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.
[0]: https://kerecis.com