Live donors of tissue

Abstract

Tissue transplantation is one of the recognized treatment strategies for replacing or repairing tissue damage resulting from disease or trauma. A living donor undergoing a surgical procedure can donate the surgical residues, such as femoral head, or placenta for amniotic membrane. Patients undoing solid organ cardiac transplantation can donate their own hearts removed for heart valve banking. Femoral head donated by patients undergoing primary hip replacement is the most widely and commonly banked tissue from living donors and is used in orthopaedic (spine and joint surgery) and oral/maxilliofacial surgery. Tissue donation to transplantation is a multistep process each of which is crucial to ensure safety and quality of the graft. There are many advantages of obtaining tissues from a living donor from tissue banking perspective. From donor selection perspective, the potential for self-exclusion and direct interview with the donor themselves to gather medical and behavioral history enhances the quality of information obtained. The blood tests can be performed on fresh, good quality samples rather than post-mortem samples as is often the case with deceased donors. Tissue is procured in a clean operating theatre environment under aseptic conditions, reducing the risk of contamination. The hospitals play key role in providing donations as well as users transplanting the tissues thereby living donor programme is a collaborative process between a tissue bank and these hospitals.