Question:
What about skin donation from panniulectomy.?

I found this on another site and thought it answers a common question about skin donation: "Although the American Red Cross operates one of the largest human skin banks in the country, we recover, process, and provide cadaveric skin only; we know of very few living skin donor programs. Skin can only be recovered from a living donor by a highly skilled, qualified, and experienced surgeon. After the recovery process, the donor must be monitored closely and, in some cases, hospitalized for a few days. Because the American Red Cross does not operate any patient treatment facilities, we do not have our own living skin donor program. In fact, very few hospitals equipped to handle such a program choose to do so. As a burn survivor, you are probably aware of the quantity of skin required to cover the wounds of a person who has suffered full-thickness burns over 10% or more of their body surface area. Based on this, it would take several living donors to provide enough skin for a single grafting procedure (assuming a 2-4% maximum recovery area from a living skin donor). This becomes very labor intensive and time/cost prohibitive, and most burn treatment centers already operate well beyond their capacities. I believe that these reasons explain the rarity of such programs. The other issue to consider is disease transmission. Living donors may be pre-tested for skin donor candidacy well in advance of donation, but still encounter many different risk factors in between testing and donating. Cadaveric skin donors are tested under "final circumstances", and cadaveric tissue (especially skin) has an excellent track record with respect to disease transmission. Our goal here at the American Red Cross is to make enough cadaveric donor skin available to meet the needs of all burn patients, and we believe that this goal is attainable with the help of other skin bans across the country. However, if the burn community (patients and professionals alike) were to identify any significant advantages to treating burns with skin from living donors, we would be very interested in helping the community meet this need. Sincerely, Jason Telgman Skin Processing Supervisor American Red Cross Tissue Services" Now we just need to find out where are the living skin donation centers. I am ON A MISSION!    — merri B. (posted on April 9, 2001)

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