Skin Transplant Surgery Proffers Sanguinity to Vitiligo Skin Disorder Patients

A pioneering trial of its type conducted in the Henry Ford Hospital, U.S., exhibited how skin transplant surgery is an effectual and safe treatment for vitiligo skin disorder.

Investigators from Henry Ford Hospital did a follow-up on twenty-three patients with vitiligo skin disorder for nearly 6 months subsequent to skin transplant surgery and observed that the affected skin recovered typically fifty-two percent of its innate skin tone. Among 8 patients having a particular form of vitiligo skin disorder, the area under treatment was able to regain seventy-four percent of its innate skin tone.

The skin transplant surgical procedure comprised of employing skin cells derived from body parts that had normal skin pigmentation and relocating them to the affected skin. The procedure is conducted after administering local anesthesia to the patient.

Dr. Iltefat Hamzavi, the leading author, chief researcher as well as high-ranking staff doctor from the Department of Dermatology, Henry Ford Hospital stated that this surgical procedure proffers optimism to vitiligo patients despite the introductory outcomes being the first round and the surgery is still in its trial phases. Dr. Hamzavi further stated that the Henry Ford hospital intends on offering the surgical procedure as branch of its therapy range during the later part of this year. He stated that in a number of patients the surgical procedure showed greater efficacy as compared to benchmark therapies like topically applied medicines and light therapy.

Dr. Hamzavi added that those having vitiligo skin disorder noted on one part of the body and in one region of the body could be best benefited from this method.

Vitiligo is a skin disorder leading to skin losing its color and developing pale or whitish skin patches varying in extent and position and affecting one in every two hundred individuals in the U.S., becoming more apparent in darker skin tones.

Vitiligo skin disorder is the consequence of melanocyte skin cells obliterated by the body’s own immune system leading to the skin losing pigmentation turning pale and whitish due to lost pigment-causing cells in that skin area. Even as vitiligo cannot be cured, its treatment and management is possible employing topically applied medicines, ointments and light therapy.

MKTP (Melanocyte-keratinocyte transplantation) surgery is the procedure employed in Henry Ford’s trial that had 32 candidates from both genders and ages from eighteen to sixty years old. An entirety of forty MKTP methods was conducted and investigators evaluated the results of twenty-nine of them. The time span of the MKTP method is anywhere between thirty minutes to 2 hours and the patient being discharged from the hospital on the same day of surgery.

From the 32 patients that underwent the MKTP procedure, a follow-up was done on 23 of them for 6 months subsequent to surgery. Single treatment was offered to 18 patients, two treatments were offered to 4 patients and 1 patient was given 3 treatments.

The MKTP procedure involves harvesting pigment-producing melanocyte cells present in the hair, eyes and skin from a part of healthy skin and then splitting them for making a skin cell mix. The application of the mix is done to the affected skin area and then covering it with specifically created adhesive-natured biological bandage.

The areas treated comprise of the face, hand, feet, arm and abdomen and typical size being treated being around forty-six square centimetres.