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

OBJECTIVE
To explore the current practices on the embalming methods and the awareness and practice of salt-saturated solution for embalming in medical education, specifically in human anatomical education.
METHODOLOGY
It was a cross-sectional study over seven months. The desired sample size was 97. The questionnaire was sent to 600 medical institutes and received a response of 334. Government and private medical institutions across the globe were included in the study. Medical colleges less than 1-year-old of establishment and institutions that did not perform embalming were excluded from the study
Establishment of a global mailing list
A mailing list was made by referring to Wikipedia and searching terms like "List of countries of the world" and "List of medical schools" to compile a list with a maximum of universities and medical schools per city, nation, and continent. 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.