A woman who was born without a vagina has finally been given hope by doctors through reconstructive surgery. Amazingly, the doctors have used fish skin in order to create a "tilapia skin vagina" for the woman.
Tilapia Skin Vagina: How Is It Possible?
Jucilene Marinho, a 23-year-old woman from Brazil was finally able to have sex for the first time following an operation to give her a new vagina.
She was born with a condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome. This condition causes the reproductive system to grow, but not fully develop. In Jucilene's case, she did not have a vagina.
"I cried a lot when I found out," she shared. "I thought my world had ended. I’d always dreamed of having a baby of my own; now I had to accept that wouldn’t be possible."
As a result, she suffered from depression and it became worse when her teenage boyfriend mocked her for her disorder.
But last year, she was given the opportunity to lead a normal life when she, along with three other women, agreed to be part an experimental procedure to create a vagina.
The doctors created a vagina for Jucilene, and lined it with tilapia skin. Tilapia skin acts like stem cells which help create new skin. This breakthrough allowed the vagina to be formed successfully.
She Now Feels like a 'Proper Woman' After the Operation
Jucilene shared that since the operation, she was initially hesitant to have sex. She shares, "At first I was very scared to do it because I thought it would hurt and I was worried it might damage the opening. But it was a wonderful moment because everything worked perfectly. There was no pain just a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction."
While methods of creating a new vagina for women with MRKH have existed, the procedure that was done on Jucilene is less invasive and much cheaper.
Much of the method's success is owed to the fact that tilapia skin contains large amounts of moisture, and collagen type 1 which helps with healing. The skin also readily adheres to human skin, and once cleaned and sterilized, it eventually becomes part of the body.
Tilapia skin has also been previously used to treat burn patients in Brazil, with positive results.
Source: news.com.au
Photo screencapped from: Facebook