Where Do Hospitals Take Amputated Body Parts?

Whenever a limb becomes too risky to cure as a result of accident, illness, or disease and can lead to death, amputation is sometimes done to deal with the situation. However, just a curious thought, what happens to these amputated limbs after? Or more likely, how do hospitals dispose of this kind of medical waste?

Normally, when a patient’s limbs need to undergo amputation, they need to sign up a waiver first, allowing pathological labs to take over their surgical wastes. After taking ownership of these body parts, they are often passed on to medical-teaching hospitals. However, according to Medical Daily reports, if in any case that these body parts are not given to teaching hospitals, they will be considered as medical waste and then disposed of. There are three ways to dispose of this kind of medical waste; first is through a controlled air incinerator, second, the excess air incinerator, and lastly the rotary kiln incinerator.

As per the Environment Protective Agency, incineration of medical waste includes the burning of the wastes produced by both the hospitals and the veterinary facilities, as well as the wastes from medical research facilities. Wastes such as infectious or red bag medical wastes and non-infectious wastes are also included in this type of disposal.

Amputated Limbs can also be bio-hazardous—so proper disposal must be observed when dealing with this kind of wastes. If not disposed of properly, it may cause harm, not only to the general public but also to the environment as well. Because of the disposal regulation nowadays, medical wastes like this are dealt with accordingly.