An errant horse bite, a pig’s bladder and one man’s fingertip have
resulted in what some are calling a minor medical miracle with great
potential to help others.
CBS Miami reports that 33-year-old Paul
Halpern was feeding his prized horse when it suddenly bit off the tip
of his index finger.
“One of the guys that worked with me reached
his hand in the horse’s mouth, took the fingertip out, and I jumped in
the car, grabbed the rest of my finger, wondering what we should do,”
Halpern told the station.
His insurance company wanted Halpern to
have the rest of his finger amputated. Instead, he visited Dr. Eugenio
Rodriguez at the Deerfield Beach Outpatient Surgical Center, who said he
had a plan to regrow the missing portion of the finger.
“He
really wanted to have his finger healed, and fast,” Dr. Rodriguez told
the station. “It’s very interesting to see a patient heal. That’s my
passion, wound healing. It is fascinating to have the new results.”
Dr.
Rodriguez used pig bladder tissue to build a template mold of the
missing fingertip. He attached the template to the wound entry point at
the end of the remaining finger.
Over the course of several
weeks, Halpern’s flesh and bone began to regrow into the template, with
even the fingernail returning.
"I couldn't notice at the time
[that it was growing], but once everything had healed and the fingernail
grew back, which is quite miraculous, and the skin healed over, then
you really notice,” Halpern told NBC Miami. "I consider myself very
lucky."
The actual procedure, called a xenograft, or
xenotransplantation, causes the cells of one species to transplant with
the cells of another species. Each day, Halpern would apply a new layer
of pig bladder tissue and cover it with a saline sheet. Dr. Rodriguez
said the pig bladder tissue stimulates stem cells, causing the new human
tissue and bone to grow.
Although rare, the procedure is not
unheard of. And technically, it’s about 100 years old, having first been
developed in the early 20th century. But it also comes with potential
risks, including infection and the potential for disease transferring
from one set of tissue to another.
Halpern said it was pain-free,
allowing him to avoid surgery or other costly approaches to physical
recovery. Dr. Rodriguez says he has been using the pig bladder powder to
treat other physical wounds and hopes the treatment becomes more
mainstream.
“I’m really grateful. I think it’s fantastic,”
Halpern said. “ I think in the future there’s going to be other uses for
it, but it wasn’t a life-threatening injury to me, it was something
that was an accident.”
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