Preemie is youngest to receive innovative life-saving treatment using fish skin

A premature baby born at just 23 weeks has become the youngest patient to receive a pioneering treatment using fish skin, which saved her life.

Eliana DeVos was born weighing just one pound, and like many preemies, had to spend months in the NICU. But while there, she developed a life-threatening bacterial infection, which affected the skin around her neck. It was spreading so quickly that little Eliana became septic.

“It was almost like a flesh-eating disease,” her mother, Krystal DeVos, said. “Her body was attacking something in her neck.”

A non-traditional treatment

Dr. Vanessa Dimas, a surgeon at Driscoll Children’s Hospital, said her skin was too fragile for traditional treatment. “She was a premature baby, the wound was very extensive and she was pretty sick, so I did not feel like it was safe to do a surgical procedure on her,” she said. The wound was still deep and extensive, and required action be taken – so Dimas turned to something a little less traditional.

Along with nurse practitioner Roxanne Reyna, who specializes in wound care, they first treated the wound with medical-grade honey, to clean it, and then applied fish skin from wild Atlantic cod, which would allow her body to grow new skin cells.

“It’s microscopically so close to human skin that it helps. The wound start to heal. It gives a scaffold,” Dimas said. “Once it basically does its job helping the wound heal then it sort of just melts away.” And within just three days, the doctors said Eliana saw “dramatic” improvement. And just 10 days later, the wound had closed completely, leaving almost no scar behind.

“It looks like a normal scar that you and I would get, you would have no way of knowing that they used fish skin to help expedite that healing process,” DeVos said.

The power of faith

Now, three years later, Eliana is healthy and thriving, and her case was presented by Dimas and Reyna in a report given in March at the European Wound Management Association Conference in Barcelona, Spain. The experience makes it all the more touching for DeVos when she sees her daughter playing with her Ariel doll.

“I call her my little mermaid,” she said. And she hopes Eliana’s story will encourage other parents to be willing to take risks for their children, even if it seems scary.

“What I hope people take away is that we can be grateful for modern medicine and the power of faith,” she said. “Never be fearful to try something new. Always be open-minded and just have faith. If something sounds different or you’ve never been exposed to it before, just take a chance and have a little faith. And in our case, it worked out really great.”