A Comparative Study of Collagen Dressing versus Petrolatum Gauze Dressing in reducing Pain at the Donor Area

BACKGROUND: Skin graft is one of the commonly done procedures by plastic surgeons, dermato surgeons and general surgeons. Pain at the donor area is a common complaint by the patient. The skin graft donor site area is usually covered with petrolatum dressing dermatosurgeons. AIM: This study was done to compare collagen dressing with petroleum gauze dressing in control of post-operative pain on skin graft donor area. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was done on forty patients, twenty as study group who received collagen dressing and twenty as control group who received petroleum gauze dressing. The procedure was randomly selected by permutated block size of four. The post-operative pain was assessed with numerical pain rating scale 0 to 10. Nursing staff did the recording of pain scale. The nursing staff was not aware whether patient had collagen or petroleum gauze dressing. STATISTICS: Statistical analysis used was independent ‘t’-test (two-sample test) and Levene's test. RESULTS: Statistics proved that study group (collagen dressing) had lesser pain than control group (petroleum gauze dressing). CONCLUSION: The collagen sheet dressing on skin graft donor area reduces pain in post-operative period.