Surgery using substitute skin saves legs of student run over by lorry

A teenager today told of the terrifying moment she thought she was going to die as she was knocked under a lorry.

The 18-year-old student has spent almost three months recovering at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel where she had surgery on her legs.

She said: "I moved back towards the island in the middle of the road because there was too much traffic but the lorry hit me on the shoulder and I fell down." Miss Hassan, from Haringey, added: "I was calm at the time, I remember feeling happy to be alive."

Since the accident on October 28, Miss Hassan, who is studying at Queen Mary University, has undergone skin grafts for the significant skin loss to both legs.

Most patients with her injuries would take 18 months to recover but with the revolutionary technique used by surgeons she could leave hospital soon. She has already taken her first steps. Doctors removed skin from her legs and covered them with a synthetic skin with a bottom layer of bovine collagen and sugar molecules.

This mimics the bottom layer of human skin and sticks to an upper layer made of silicon sheet. The top layer is removed two to three weeks later and replaced with the patient's own skin. Professor Simon Myers, one of the surgeons who operated on Miss Hassan, said: "The key was to try to replace the skin in a way that meant Mona not having to come back lots of times to hospital in future."