My friend has just lost a ton of weight and has mega excess skin folds. Her sister told her that a Burn unit here in Georgia where I live will do her plastic surgery for free and even compensate for lost salery while recovering so that they can use her skin to graft to burn patients. Does anyone know if this is true and if so where can I find the information?

i don't have an answer, but i want to know one. so i'm posting so i can subscribe.

i BELIEVE i HEARD the skin couldn't be used but don't know when or where Im heard that.

Thanks for responding, I also heard that live skin couldn't be used, but my friend is the universal blood type, I think it is O+, and she got all this info from her sister who got it from one of the horses mouths. She is one of those people who talks forever about nothing at all so I am hesitant to call her for more details. I tried doing research on it, went to the thinnertimes forum and saw a threat that they don't use living people skin, but my friend said that the burn unit here was desperate for skin donations so they might be trying something new!?!

let me know what you find out please. i am also o+.

Universal blood donor type is O neg, not O pos.

My only suggestion would be to contact the burn centers and ask them who to talk to.

Jewel

I think they call this an "Urban legend"

The skin would not be suitable for use, regardless of blood type.

I don't understand why it wouldn't be, I mean they use cadaver skin donations to do grafts. I know that the body will tend to reject the skin but you'd think living tissue would be better than cadaver tissue. I am not saying you are wrong Chickie, it just doesn't make since to me.

Well now they can grow skin in labs so It might or might not be true. It takes time to grow the substitute skin.

Shouldn't be hard to call a nearby burn unit and ask though.

Years---and I do mean years ago on the Phil Donahue show they had a woman and a firefighter on, she was scheduled to have a TT, and skin removal, and he was burned over his entire back. She actually postponed her surgery until he was stable enough for the grafts. I do not remember much about it, just enough that it made an impression.

This is not to say that because I saw it on Phil that it is bound to be true----just that I saw it.

Call around, ask questions--all it is going to cost you is some time. Would be nice to have a definitive answer.

I would seriously doubt the surgery being a freebie and the wage compensations though--not in this day and age with the litigious society we live in. An elective procedure...I cannot imagine anyone wanting to assume liability, which you assume yourself when YOU opt to pay for it.

Would be nice though!

Kat

I don't understand why it wouldn't be, I mean they use cadaver skin donations to do grafts. I know that the body will tend to reject the skin but you'd think living tissue would be better than cadaver tissue. I am not saying you are wrong Chickie, it just doesn't make since to me.

Everyone says I'm wrong. I am used to it.

But I know that in Australia, if you called a burns unit, and asked them to pay for your lost wages, surgery time, or anything else in exchange for your excess skin, they would DIE laughing. Lab grown skin is cheaper, safer, and has a far lower rejection rate.

Out of morbid curiosity, I asked my reconstructive surgeon if he had ever heard of it, and he almost busted a gut laughing.

But yeah. I'm wrong.

My PS said that the skin is too thin and stretched to be a good quality to use for any type of skin grafting. Of course, this is only one Doctor, you could call around to see if anyone was accepting skin from a procedure like a LBL or TT. I doubt they would take it but what do I know?

Well I ask my Uncle who is an MD about this---and he said it is highly doubtful this would be an acceptable practice. He said he did not doubt that they had attempted it many times over, it is just apparantly not meeting the required needs of skin grafting.

He did say if you are having surgery at or near a teaching hospital---you CAN donate anything removed--including skin. Often times these hospitals, have it in the paperwork you are signing pre op, that they reserve the right to use or retain any removed organ or body part. He said they are (parts---skin included) same as cadaver study. The parts are also donated to study disease control. Many things--but he said that would be his best bet for actually having something good come of it.

I have to admit, after the conversation with him, it made me think of a commercial that ran here for awhile, about someone finding love handles in the park, and a belly somewhere else, advertising some sort of weight control something---I imagined all these students in lab settings, each with their own fat belly lying on the table instead of dissecting frogs!!

Kat