Prevalence of skin allograft discards as a result of serological and molecular microbiological screening in a regional skin bank in Italy.

Background: Postmortem skin is widely used in the treatment of patients with severe burns. Skin specimens must be screened for transmissible agents including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B (HBV) and C (HCV) virus, human T-cell lymphotropic virus (HTLV), cytomegalovirus (CMV) and Treponema pallidum.

Methods: Four hundred and sixty-one cadaveric donors underwent serological and molecular microbiological (polymerase chain reaction, PCR) screening at Siena Skin Bank between 2000 and 2004.

Results: 74/461 donors (16.1%) were found ineligible under current regulations.

Conclusions: These results are interesting in a local context and underline the importance of screening involving both routine serological procedures and molecular microbiological investigation. The latter has not been uniformly introduced in many countries and very limited data is available to assess its cost-benefit ratio in the field of skin donor screening.