A Prospective Study on Challenges Faced by Skin Bank at a Government Tertiary Care Centre (Osmania General Hospital, Hyderabad)

Background: A skin bank is an organization having sufcient structure, equipment, laboratories and knowns how to ensure safety and efcacy of the entire skin banking process.Skin banking is a process in which skin grafts are harvested from eligible cadaver donors, processed and stored for future use. Annual incidence of burns in India is about 6-7 millions. In India most of the burn victims are from the lower socio economic strata.Since use of human skin allograft has been found to be an extremely useful and life saving temporary biological skin cover in the management of extensive burn patients, skin banking for a tertiary care centre & for MCh post graduates training is prerequisite to make the treatment procedure affordable for patients with deep burns, for which cadaveric skin allograft is a better option as a life saving measure. Skin allograft was taken from eligible cadaveric donors with the p Methods: rior consent from next of kin of donor. All samples of skin allograft are being processed, stored to use in future for patients with burns or extensive trauma. A total of Results: about 18,108 sq cm allograft was obtained, Out of which, about 6,339 sq cm allograft was used for burns patients with better outcome interms of decreasing the morbidity, hospital stay and better quality of life and a better chance at survival. Conclusions: :Since use of human skin allograft has been found to be an extremely useful and life saving temporary biological skin cover in the management of extensive burn patients, and there is huge gap in demand and supply of the required allograft skin, more and more skin banks needed in various parts of India.