Victoria hospitals have provided skin to more than 100 people this year.
Bengaluru: The patients who were waiting for their skin grafting surgery will finally be able to get their surgeries done. This has become possible because of the increased availability of skin in the skin banks in Bangalore.
Doctors say that more than 100 patients had undergone the procedure of skin grafting as the city saw an increase in the number of skin donations this year compared to the previous year.
“The skin donations have improved post Covid. Earlier, in two years, we would hardly receive only one or two donations. However, this time, we are receiving as many as 10-12 donations a month.”
Skin collected from skin donation is used for the procedure of skin grafting. Doctors usually recommend skin grafting for people who suffer from severe burn injuries or accident injuries. The doctors usually replace the scarred tissue with the donated skin tissue, which helps in quicker healing.
The skin for donation ideally should be taken from a donor who died of a cardiac arrest. Nithya M, sister of a patient who underwent skin grafting said, “My brother had recently gotten into a road accident. He had severely injured his thighs. This skin of his thigh had completely ruptured. So, the doctor suggested skin grafting as he said it would help in healing his wound faster. The surgery was for 1.2 lakhs.”
While skin is given for free, the procedure is quite expensive, costing anywhere between 25 thousand to 15 lakhs.
Experts believe that skin grafting improves the quality of life of a person. It is an important procedure because it helps in the regeneration of the person’s own skin.
However, despite seeing an increase in the number of skin donations, experts say that compared to the donation of other organs, skin donation is still low.
“Most of the people are still hesitant to donate skin of their family members. This is because they fear that the body will be disfigured if the skin is taken from it. However, that is not the case. We only take the tissue of the skin, that too from places which cannot be seen such as the thighs, lower back, the back of hands, etc.”
Experts believe that to improve the donation numbers, there should be campaigns in open forums where qualified people should tell others about the process and the benefits of skin donation in simple language.
