Anaesthetist Hazir Mukkadim checks on three-year-old Isabella Pippie Kruger during her skin transplant at the Garden City Clinic in Johannesburg.
“Overall we can say it’s a success,” plastic surgeon Dr Ridwan Mia told reporters in Johannesburg.
“It went quite well. It took us a lot longer than we thought.”
He said surgeons needed to be extremely careful in removing Pippie’s initial dressings. The toddler was stable throughout the operation and was doing well.
Dressings would be changed every two to three days, and Pippie would be woken from sedation gradually during the course of the week.
Mia said 90% of the skin, which was grown in a laboratory in the US and then flown to South Africa, took, with there being only isolated islands where it did not attach to her body. He said 90% was a deliberately conservative estimate.
The operation theatre had to be kept hot to ensure Pippie’s temperature stayed within a satisfactory region.
The three-year-old’s parents, Erwin and Anice Kruger, were extremely happy with the results.
“We are ecstatic. It’s an incredible feeling,” Anice said.
Sheets of Pippie’s own skin were grown using skin taken from her groin.
The graft was performed at Johannesburg’s Garden City Clinic, where the child had been in the high care unit for the last six months.
It was the first time this type of advanced skin graft had been performed in Africa. It had been performed in the US and Europe.
Kruger had been in hospital since a bottle of flammable liquid exploded in her father’s hands and she was covered in flames at a braai in December. – Sapa