57.8 Storing grafts

If necessary, you can store a graft in an ordinary refrigerator. Stick its upper surface to vaseline gauze. Roll it in gauze moistened with saline, with its raw moist surfaces together. Keep vaseline away from these surfaces, or it will prevent the graft taking. Put the roll in a sterile screw capped bottle labelled with the patient’s name. No anaesthetic is needed to apply it, so you can do this in the ward. Unroll the bundle, cut the vaseline gauze to the required size, and lay the graft on his wound. The sooner you apply it the better. You will be wise to discard grafts after eight days, although they may keep for 2 or 3 weeks.

If you take more graft than you need, you can also store it by putting it back on the donor site. If you use it within four days, you can usually lift it off again without cutting. Wise surgeons always take more graft than they need, so that, later, they can regraft any areas in which a graft has failed to take on the first occasion.

If you don’t use a graft on the patient from which it came, you can use it to provide temporary cover as a homograft on other patients.