Tissue Services

NHS Blood and Transplant, Tissue Services is the UK's major provider of human tissue for transplant. Our role is to co-ordinate, recover, process, bank and supply human tissue grafts for use in surgery within the National Health Service (NHS) and independent hospitals in the UK. As part of the NHS we operate as a not-for-profit organisation, with patient safety our core principle.

We bank and supply tissue grafts from around 400 deceased tissue donors per year and respond on a 24-hour basis to over 4,000 donor referrals. Our key objectives are to provide high quality, safe and effective tissue grafts for the benefit of patients. We also work in collaboration with coroners, pathologists and NHS partners to provide families of tissue donors with access to a team of specially trained nurses. Their role is to discuss the donation options and help facilitate the donation process. We also offer a live bone donor programme, where patients who are having hip replacement surgery can donate the bone they are having removed. We currently work with 75 hospitals to run this program, and bank bone from more than 3,000 living donors. We also operate a program whereby new mothers can donate amnion for use in eye surgery.