Scientists regrow skin that’s burnt

13.06.2017

A small US biotech has successfully regenerated skin and stimulated hair growth in pigs with burns and abrasions, paving the way for a scientific breakthrough that could lead to the regeneration of fully functional human skin.

Salt Lake City-based PolarityTE Inc’s patented approach to tissue engineering is designed to use a patient’s own healthy tissue to re-grow human skin for the treatment of burns and wounds. Despite recent advances in reconstructive surgery, plastic surgeons cannot give burn victims what they require the most — their skin.

Current approaches to treat serious burns are “severely limited” in their effectiveness and in some cases, are rather expensive, PolarityTE’s founder and CEO Denver Lough said.

PolarityTE conducted its study on wounded pigs at an animal facility in Utah. The use of therapy resulted in scar-less healing, growth of hair follicles, complete wound coverage and the progressive regeneration of all skin layers, the company said. As pig skin is more complex and robust than human skin, successful swine data is seen as a precursor to effectiveness in human trials.

PolarityTE expects to begin a human trial later this year and the cell therapy could hit the market 12 to 18 months thereafter, said Lough, who served as senior plastic surgery resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital before creating the firm.

State govt. hikes job quota for differently abled to 4%

Decision follows notification of Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act by Centre

The Tamil Nadu government has increased the reservation for differently abled persons in government vacancies to 4% from the existing 3%, in line with the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami announced here on Tuesday.

The 4% reservation for differently abled would apply to all State public service enterprises, public sector undertakings, boards, corporations, educational institutions, local bodies, and government-aided institutions across the State, Mr. Palaniswami said.

As per Section 34 (1) of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, every government shall appoint in every government establishment, not less than 4% of the total number of vacancies in the cadre strength in each group of posts meant to be filled with persons with benchmark disabilities.

While blindness and low vision, deaf and hard of hearing categories would have 1% of reservation in each of the categories, locomotor disability, including cerebral palsy, leprosy cured, dwarfism, acid attack victims and muscular dystrophy would have 1% reservation.

Autism, intellectual disability, specific learning disability, mental illness and multiple disabilities would have 1% reservation, says a G.O.

The State government’s decision follows the proposal sent by the State Commissioner for the Differently-Abled to increase the reservation for the category after the Centre notified the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, in April this year.

‘Clear backlogs’

Hailing the move, former Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss urged the government to clear the backlog of vacancies [under the quota system] soon.

S. Namburajan, State Secretary of Tamil Nadu Association for the Rights of All Types of Differently-Abled and Caregivers (TARATDAC), has welcomed the State government’s announcement.

IGGY Wishes Plastic Surgeon

Iggy Azalea had plenty of things to be thankful for this year, including the birthday of the man who helped her realize a dream of having the body she's always wanted. The 26-year-old "Fancy" rapper posted a loving Instagam photo with Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Ashkan Ghavami, the physician who performed rhinoplasty and breast augmentation on her. 

This device lets you do part breast reconstruction at home

This might be the ultimate do-it-yourself project: Doctors are testing a device that would let women do part of their own breast reconstruction at home.

It's aimed at not only making treatment more comfortable and convenient, but also giving women a sense of control - something cancer often takes away.

More than 100,000 women each year in the United States have surgery to remove a cancerous breast, and many of them choose reconstruction with an implant. To make room for a permanent one, many of them get a tissue expander, a temporary pouch that is gradually enlarged with saline to stretch the remaining skin and muscle. This means trips to the doctor every week or two for several months for injections of saline into the pouch, which can be a painful ordeal.

"We would put as much saline as we could until basically the patient would say, 'I can't stand it anymore,'" said Dr. Daniel Jacobs, a Kaiser Permanente plastic surgeon in San Jose, California.

While biking home one day, Jacobs had an idea: Why couldn't a tiny can of compressed gas, like the one he carries to fix a flat tire, be used to let women inflate their own tissue expanders, a little each day so there is less stretching at a time and less pain?

He helped found a company - AirXpanders Inc. of Palo Alto, California - to develop the device, called AeroForm. It's sold in Australia, approved in Europe and under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Its use requires no special training, wires or tubes - just a palm-sized remote control that activates a tiny cartridge inside the pouch to pump gas, up to three times a day according to how the woman feels.

In a company-sponsored study of 150 women, AeroForm patients finished tissue expansion in half the time and were able to get implants a month sooner than others who had the usual saline treatments, said the study leader, Dr. Jeffrey Ascherman, a plastic surgeon at Columbia University Presbyterian Medical Center in New York.

"My patients love it," he said. When some women who agreed to be in the study learned they had been assigned to get the saline device for comparison, "I had one who started crying, and other women said, 'please Dr. Ascherman, can't you change it?'" he said.

There was no difference in rates of side-effects such as infections, but seven of the air expanders malfunctioned versus only one saline one, Ascherman said. The device was tweaked to fix the problem, he said.

"It's a really interesting concept," said one outside expert, Dr. Deanna Attai, a University of California at Los Angeles surgeon who is a past president of the American Society of Breast Surgeons.

"Giving the patient a sense of control is very psychologically important," because many women feel robbed of that, Attai said. "To a patient that's going through cancer treatment that could be a big deal."

Dr. Susan E. Downey, a Los Angeles plastic surgeon who used the AeroForm on two patients in the study, said: "I think it will make life easier for a lot of people."

It did for 35-year-old Luincys Fernandez, a high school chemistry teacher who lives in Bogota, New Jersey, and teaches in New York. She was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago, when pregnant with her second son, and used the AeroForm as part of the study.

"I really, really liked it," she said. She carried the remote control in her purse and completed the tissue expansion in just 18 days.

"It did not interrupt any of my daily activities. I could go back to normal. I could see the results right away and I could see where I wanted it to go" in terms of size and appearance, she said.

The device comes in three sizes. Women can choose the amount of inflation up to a point, limited by how much tissue is left and how far the device can expand. Once fully expanded, the device is removed and replaced with a breast implant.

In Australia, AeroForm costs more than saline expanders but requires fewer office visits, so costs are not directly comparable. In the U.S., tissue expansion generally is reimbursed at a flat rate that is part of breast reconstruction, and AeroForm's impact on this cost - if the device wins FDA approval - is not clear.

Would you opt for a foot facelift or iris implants? (Getty Images)

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Here's a look at bizarre plastic surgeries that are popular across the world

A recent report found that several women across the world are opting to get designer vaginal surgeries to look good in tight yoga pants and bikinis. The procedure, called labiaplasty, involves changing the size and shape of the outer or inner vaginal lips. We take a look at some other bizarre, but popular plastic surgery procedures...

EYELASH AND EYEBROW TRANSPLANTS

Hair transplantation is not restricted to the head alone. Many people are choosing to transplant hair on to their eyebrows and eyelids to tackle thinning and falling out with age. With an eyebrow transplant, one can get the ideal shape and thickness, but this procedure can leave a scar.

FOOT FACELIFT

Think lifts are only for your face? Think again, because your foot can also get a `facelift'. This surgery is for those who want to reduce fat on their toes and shorten toe length to make their feet look narrow and attractive. Many women choose to do this to fit into high-heels and tight-fitting shoes.

CINDERELLA SURGERY

Another surgery to help women fit into stilettos better is the Cinderella surgery.Bunions cause a lot of pain while wearing high heels, so this procedure simply removes the `trouble maker', thereby making wearing high heels more bearable.

POKER FACE BOTOX

People who don't want to show any emotions on their faces are opting for the poker face botox. Botox is strategically injected on your face so that there is no way of knowing if you are happy, sad, angry or happy -just like a professional poker player. The effects usually last about 3-4 months.

IRIS IMPLANTS

Don't like the colour of your eyes? Change it by getting iris implants. The implants are made of silicone, and are folded and inserted into the eye to cover the iris, thereby doing away with the need to wear contact lenses.

MALE LASER LIFT

Popularly known as ball ironing, this is for men who want to look young... down there.This non-surgical form of scrotum rejuvenation involves using lasers to remove hair, erase wrinkles and correct discolouration on the scrotum.

INTERNAL BRA

All women want perky breasts, and this can now be achieved without wearing a bra. The internal bra uses hardened silicone cups that are placed under the breast tissue and then lifted with silk straps that are screwed into the rib cage with small titanium anchors.

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