Live Donor

The potential donor is usually a patient who applied for hip-replacement surgery. To verify the suitability for donation the patient must fill in a questionnaire, sign an informed consent and provide their detailed clinical history. Additional screening is carried out to confirm suitability. 
For additional information on the live bone donor, please see our informative brochure in the attachments below.

The Donation process

During the hip-replacement surgery, the femoral head is removed to be replaced with a prosthetic hip. The experts in the surgery room carry out several quality control tests on the removed bone, then proceed to the sterile packaging and send it to the Musculoskeletal Tissue Bank BTM.

Conservation in the Musculoskeletal Tissue Bank BTM

The bone is stored frozen until usage. The suitability of the tissue is declared once all the tests carried out on the donor are within range.

Implant/transplant

Once suitable, bone grafts are distributed to applicants. All the sensitive data of the donor are protected under a strict privacy protocol, and traceability of the tissue is guaranteed via a unique reference number assigned.

Autologous Donor

Homologous tissue is harvested from a donor different to the recipient. On the other hand, when we talk about autologous tissue, donor and recipient coincide. 

What happens in autologous donation

• During surgery, tissue is harvested from the patient and applied in another area of the same patient. The graft can be vascularized and ease the engraftment process. However, it can be a limiting procedure due to the long timing and double surgical wounds. i.e. Harvesting bone from the iliac crest or tendon transposition in the knee. 
• Tissue grafts harvested during the surgery can be stored and utilised on the same patient after a certain amount of time. i.e. Harvesting of cranial opercula for decompression surgery
• Bone grafts can also be retrieved from a patient undergoing surgery after a trauma. The grafts need to be suitable and can be reimplanted on the patient after a cleaning and decontamination treatment.

All autologous grafts designated to be implanted in a second surgery must be processed under current guidelines by a Tissue Bank. The tissue designated for autologous use has to be applied within the expiry date, after such date it will be disposed of. Under no circumstances, the tissue can be applied to a different recipient than the donor. The graft can be harvested and stored for autologous use at the sole discretion of the surgeon.