By I. Edwards HealthDay Reporter<\/b>
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TUESDAY, June 3, 2025 (HealthDay News) \u2014 When Eliana DeVos plays with her Ariel doll, her mom can\u2019t help but get emotional.<\/p>\n
\u201cI call her my little mermaid,\u201d Krystal DeVos, who lives in Corpus Christi, Texas, told CNN<\/em>.<\/p>\n What makes that nickname extra special is the surprising way Eliana\u2019s life was saved \u2014 through the use of fish skin.<\/p>\n Eliana was born extremely premature, at just 23 weeks and weighing just one pound.<\/p>\n She spent 131 days in neonatal intensive care, where she developed a severe, fast-spreading infection on her neck that doctors say nearly took her life.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was almost like a flesh-eating disease,\u201d her mom said. \u201cHer body was attacking something in her neck.\u201d<\/p>\n The infection led to sepsis<\/a>, a dangerous condition that can shut down the organs. As her condition worsened, her family and doctors looked for anything that might help.<\/p>\n That\u2019s when doctors at Driscoll Children\u2019s Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, offered a new option: using fish skin to help her wound heal.<\/p>\n Dr. Vanessa Dimas<\/a>, a pediatric plastic surgeon at Driscoll, said Eliana was too fragile for surgery or a human skin graft.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was a premature baby. The wound was very extensive. And she was pretty sick,\u201d Dimas said.<\/p>\n Instead, she and wound care nurse practitioner Roxana Reyna<\/a> used a medical honey solution to clean the wound. Then they added fish skin, a medical product made from wild North Atlantic cod, to help it close and heal.<\/p>\n The fish skin \u2014 made by the Icelandic company Kerecis<\/a> \u2014 acts like a scaffold, helping new skin tissue grow. It\u2019s close to human skin in structure and contains omega oils and other natural healing elements.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce it basically does its job helping the wound heal, it sort of just melts away,\u201d Dimas said.<\/p>\n In Eliana\u2019s case, the results came quickly. After just three days, doctors noticed \u201cdramatic\u201d improvements. They changed her dressings every three days.<\/p>\n Ten days after the first fish skin treatment, her wound had closed \u2014 with little scarring and no surgery, CNN <\/em>reported.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were no adverse reactions,\u201d Dimas and Reyna wrote in a report presented in March at the European Wound Management Association Conference<\/a> in Barcelona, Spain.<\/p>\n Three years later, Eliana\u2019s scar is barely visible.<\/p>\n The doctors say she was likely the first preemie so small to receive this treatment.<\/p>\n Fish skin has been used for wound care around the world, but not often in children \u2014 and especially not in babies as small as Eliana.<\/p>\n Dr. Arun Gosain<\/a>, chair of plastic surgery at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children\u2019s Hospital in Chicago and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said other types of animal tissue have also been used for wound healing.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are other forms of what we call xenografts, or taking tissue from another species and using it for wound healing,\u201d Gosain said.<\/p>\n They come from animals like pigs or cows.<\/p>\n They don\u2019t replace skin but can act as temporary dressings to keep a wound clean and help healing begin. Still, Gosain cautioned that not all wounds will heal with these methods.<\/p>\n Further, doctors must be careful about allergies \u2014 especially to fish. In babies, it\u2019s not always clear whether they have allergies.<\/p>\n \u201cThat would be the biggest risk: an unknown allergy that could potentially cause some problems,\u201d Dimas said. \u201cOther than that, there\u2019s still a chance that the kid may need surgery, because we don\u2019t know how much this is going to help us heal the child.\u201d<\/p>\n For Eliana\u2019s mom, the experience was inspiring.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I hope people take away is that we can be grateful for modern medicine and the power of faith,\u201d she told CNN.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cNever be fearful to try something new. Always be open-minded and just have faith,\u201d she said. \u201cIf something sounds different or you\u2019ve never been exposed to it before, just take a chance and have a little faith. And in our case, it worked out really great.\u201d<\/p>\n More information<\/strong><\/p>\n The National Institutes of Health has more on fish skin for wound dressings<\/a>.<\/p>\n