ORLANDO, Fla. — New clinical data presented at the American Burn Association Annual Meeting shows that intact fish-skin grafts may significantly reduce hospital stays for patients with severe burns requiring skin grafting.
Kerecis said the findings come from a retrospective, propensity-matched study comparing outcomes for 465 patients treated with either fish-skin grafts or synthetic alternatives made from reconstituted collagen and polyurethane.
After adjusting for factors such as age, burn severity, and overall health, researchers found that patients treated with fish-skin grafts had shorter hospital stays—24.2 days on average compared with 33.5 days for those receiving synthetic products, a difference of 9.3 days.
Complication rates were also lower in the fish-skin group across several key measures, including sepsis, graft loss, venous thromboembolism, and hospital-acquired pressure injuries. Graft loss occurred in 3.2 percent of patients treated with fish-skin, compared with 8.3 percent among those treated with synthetic materials.
A separate sensitivity analysis involving a larger group of 687 patients confirmed the findings, showing hospital stays of 27.6 days for fish-skin treatments versus 38.5 days for synthetic alternatives.
“The real-world comparative data shows that hospital stays are shorter for burn patients treated with intact fish-skin grafts than for those treated with products that do not replicate the structure of native human tissue and are made from reconstituted cross-linked collagen and synthetic polyurethane,” said Fertram Sigurjonsson, Coloplast Executive Vice President and founder of Kerecis.
Rajiv Sood, M.D., FACS, the study’s lead author, said the results point to faster wound-bed preparation and reliable graft performance. “The intact fish-skin grafts achieved wound-bed readiness and closure significantly faster than the synthetic products, and the graft loss rate was lower, not higher,” he said.
Researchers said the improved outcomes appear to be driven by the material’s ability to prepare a wound bed more efficiently, while avoiding longer integration timelines associated with some synthetic products.
