Medical Treatment Using Fish Skin Is Helping Pets Hurt From Camp Fire

A new medical treatment using fish skin, is being used to help treat pets that were caught and badly burned by the Camp Fire.

By NathanG on December 5, 2018
(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Cats and dogs, that were caught in the Camp fire, are being healed through a unique treatment using fish skin.

According to SFGate, these treatments are being performed at a veterinary hospital based in Chico. An example of this medical process was one performed on Olivia, a Boston terrier that caught in the fire while her owners were out of town. After discovering she survived the fire, her owners took the burned pup to VCA Valley Oak Veterinary Center in Chico.

Related: Aaron Rodgers Donates $1 Million to Camp Fire Victims

There, veterinarians applied tilapia skin to the Boston terrier’s burned legs. With this treatment, new skin begins growing within five days, whereas otherwise the process can take weeks for severe burns. Dusty Spencer, a vet surgeon at VCA Valley Oak, shared the exciting news. “We’ve been very impressed and somewhat amazed with the amount of healing that happened underneath those fish skins.”

Jamie Peyton, the chief of the Integrative Medicine Service at the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, also assited Spencer with the procedure. Peyton had used this treatment with fish skin before, to treat bears and a mountain lion burned in the 2017 Thomas Fire in Ventura County. However, this marked the first time any veterinarian had used tilapia to heal burns on cats and dogs.

All together, the team has used this treatment to help heal four cats and four dogs that were burned in the Camp Fire.

To read more about this amazing medical team and their efforts to heal these injured animals, click here.

 

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