Current practices of embalming and utility of the salt saturated solution in embalming-A global survey

A list of medical schools was searched from the WHO World directory of medical schools. The contact email addresses of the Anatomy faculty of the medical colleges were collected from the American Association of Clinical Anatomists (AACA) and the European Association of Clinical Anatomists (EACA) online registries (EACA) and the anatomical society of India. Mail IDs of the faculty were obtained by searching the individual websites of each University for the anatomy departments using the following keywords: anatomy, anatomy department, anatomy laboratory, anatomia, anatomja to complete the list of email contacts.

Details of questionnaire It contained 34 questions. Thirty of the questions were closed-ended, and four were open-ended. These were arranged into six sections. 1-Demographic details of institutes 2-Current embalming practices at the institute 3-Embalming practices for undergraduate teachings 4-Embalming practices for surgical training 5-Opinion on embalming practices and willingness for a change 6-Awareness of salt-saturated solution for embalming Distribution of the questionnaire The questionnaire was distributed electronically through Google Forms, and the informed consent form through email.

It was sent to 600 institutions where embalming was practiced. After a week, a reminder email was sent. Following a week, the last mail or phone reminder was sent, and the response was recorded.

The anatomy faculty filled out the questionnaire on behalf of the institution. Data analysis Percentages and frequencies were calculated for the responses to the multiple-choice questions. Answers to open-ended questions were arranged under themes and coded.

The frequencies and percentages of relevant reactions were compared between institutes in India and abroad based on their location, area, category, and year of establishment. SPSS version 16, IBM software were used for statistical analysis. The Chi-square test examined the differences between the two categorical variables.