Background: Traditionally, patients who require lower extremity skin grafting remain on bed rest for several days. Despite the evidence advocating for early ambulation following split skin graft surgeries, studies reviewing plastic surgery departments nationwide have suggested that it has not been routinely practiced. The purpose of the study was to determine whether an early ambulation had any effect on a graft take as compared to the late ambulation in lower extremity autografts.

Methodology: A prospective comparative study was conducted involving 40 consenting patients in each group, treated between November 2015 to February 2017 in the Department of Burns and Plastic Surgery with a diagnosis of lower limb injury as per the inclusion and exclusion criteria was taken up for the study. One group was early ambulatory group (EAG) and another standard late ambulatory group (LAG). Size of the wound was measured using Graph sheet method. Various epidemiological and morbidity parameters were compared. Statistical Analysis: was done using statistical software package SPSS v22.0.

Results: The mean duration of stay in hospital when compared was suggestive of significance of early ambulation. When graft take was compared between two groups, it was found that there is no significant difference in both groups. Pearson correlation coefficient analysis shows that subjects with greater wound size needed more number of days in resumption.

Conclusion: With this study one can conclude that immobilisation is not mandatory and mobilisation can be encouraged in lower limb autograft cases.