AHMEDABAD, 28 JUL

For 8-month-old Dhyaansh, the youngest victim of the 12 June Air India plane crash, his mother not only turned into a saviour when she rescued him from the on-ground crash fire but also provided her skin for grafts to treat his deep burn wounds.

The child, who suffered 36 per cent burns, is on the road to recovery as the skin of his mother, who also sustained 25 per cent burns, was used for grafts to help heal his wounds, as per doctors.

Skin grafts involve transplanting healthy skin to cover wounds, burns or areas damaged by surgery or disease and promote tissue growth to help a person heal.

The infant and his mother have been discharged from a private hospital here following five weeks of intensive treatment and plastic surgery to restore the skin damaged due to fire, doctors said on Monday.

The child's own skin, along with his mother's skin grafts, was used to treat his third-degree burn wounds, said Dr Rutvij Parikh, consultant plastic surgeon at the KD Hospital.

When the Air India 171 plane crashed into the BJ Medical College's hostel-cum residential complex here on 12 June, Manisha Kachhadiya and her son Dhyaansh were in one of the buildings affected by the crash.

Dhyaansh's father, Kapil Kachhadiya, is pursuing his super-speciality MCh degree course in urology at the BJ Medical College attached with the Civil Hospital.

At the time of the crash, he was at the hospital while his wife and son were in their allotted quarter.

Both of them suffered burn injuries in the horrific tragedy, which claimed 260 lives, including 241 people on board the aircraft and others on the ground.

The magnitude of the crash and subsequent fire was such that, despite being inside a flat, the heat caused burn injuries to Manisha, a homoeopath, and Dhyaansh, said Kapil Kachhadiya.

He said that when the crash occurred, Manisha suffered injuries, but she picked up their son and managed to come out of the building.

After taking primary treatment at the Civil Hospital, both were rushed to the KD Hospital the same day, given their severe burn injuries, said Dr Parth Desai, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the private medical facility.

According to Parikh, Manisha had suffered 25 burns on her arms, face and legs, while the infant suffered 36 per cent burns on his face and other body parts.

"Since some wounds were deep due to third-degree burns suffered by both the mother and son, we needed to perform the skin grafting procedure to cover those wounds," he said.

"In this procedure, we take a thin layer of skin and graft it on the wound to cover it. The place from where the skin is taken gets healed with time, and a new skin eventually covers it," said Parikh.

First, Manisha's skin was grafted to heal her wounds, said Parikh, who performed the surgeries at the KD Hospital.

Subsequently, Parikh took the skin of Manisha as well as Dhyaansh to cover his burn injuries, the plastic surgeon said.

"To cover Dhyaansh's wounds, we needed more skin because infants do not have much skin on their bodies. Thus, we used both Manisha and his skin to cover his wounds. Usually, a mother's skin is preferred in such cases," he said.

"Both eventually recovered and were discharged a week ago after five weeks of intensive treatment," Parikh said.

Apart from the mother-son duo, four other patients, all medical students of the BJ Medical College, were treated at the KD Hospital, Desai said.

"A total of six patients, including the mother-son duo, were admitted to our hospital after getting injured in the plane crash. Among the four medical students, one had a fracture, while another had a facial injury. But the most complicated case was of this mother-son duo," he added.