Live donor programmes

Bone donation: Turning by-products into life products

In order to meet surgical demand for fresh frozen femoral heads (the current product of choice of surgeons performing revision hip surgery) we have established partnerships with around 90 hospitals in England. These partnerships, which make up the live bone donor programme, enable us to ensure that patients undergoing primary hip replacement surgery are offered the option to donate their femoral head which is removed as part of the operation.

We have a specially trained team who are employed to work with hospitals to set up and run these partnerships. The surgical bone programme is defined in an SLA which each participating hospital and NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) sign up to. Our teams provide full, on the ground support and training for our hospital partners in every aspect of the programme. All expenses are met by us and we also reimburse staff time and arrange all the relevant HTA licences.

New cleaning protocol

We have recently developed a cleaning protocol that removes circa 99.9% of marrow/blood components from whole femoral heads. This significantly reduces the already minimal risk of donor to recipient infection, and is currently being scaled up so that it will be available for all donated femoral heads if required.

Join our network

Does your hospital have an active hip replacement programme but you are not currently one of our live bone donor sites?

Please contact us on 0845 607 6820 to discuss the possibility of joining our network of partner sites to providing urgently required tissue for transplant.

Amniotic Membrane donation

Donated by living donors following elective caesarean sections. Immediately following donation, the amniotic membrane is dissected free from the placental membrane and rinsed clear of all blood and tissue debris. It is decontaminated by antibiotic incubation, cut to size and stored frozen in a in a glycerol solution. Stored frozen in quarantine until the donor has been medically authorised for issue. 

There are only a small number of hospitals in the UK which you can donate this tissue. 

This tissue is then used in reconstructive eye surgery.