Tissue and eye services

Thanks to our donors and their families, we’re able to provide tissue to repair or rebuild the bodies, faces and lives of severely injured people.

Our specialist tissue donation nurses are responsible for the coordination of tissue donation after death. They provide support and assistance to newly bereaved families, and ensure tissues are donated in accordance with the wishes of our donors and their loved ones.

Registering to be a tissue donor is quick and easy.

You can choose to donate tissue, such as skin, bone, tendons, eyes, heart valves and arteries after your death. Or, you can donate some tissue when you’re alive, for example, removed bone following a hip replacement.

Mothers who have had their babies safely delivered by elective caesarean section can donate amniotic membrane.

We operate the UK's largest tissue bank and are the largest not-for-profit organisation supplying the NHS with human tissue for transplant. Our role is to co-ordinate, recover, process, bank and supply human tissue grafts for use in surgery within the NHS and independent hospitals in the UK.

We also provide support services to other tissue banks. Our National Referral Centre gains consent to donate from over 2,500 eye only donors per year, which is more than half of all eye donors in the UK.

We offer a wide range of tissue grafts for use by various surgical specialities including orthopaedics, burns, cardiology and ophthalmics.

Our unique service controls the whole supply chain of tissue from donor referral to surgery. This lets us guarantee the highest safety and quality standards. Thus minimising risk to patients.