About the Service
The Bone Bank is a facility for collecting, storing and freezing human bone for use in patients requiring a bone allograft (the transplantation of bone between two unrelated people).
In Scotland, all Bone Banking is under the auspices of the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service. There is a Bone Bank attached to each transfusion centre (i.e. Inverness, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow).
Recently, a satellite Bone Bank was established in Dr. Gray’s Hospital, Elgin.(See original article in Journal of Orthopaedic Nursing. "Setting up a satellite bone harvesting service to supply cancellous bone graft” by Lynn Kropp et al, 2003).
This augments the much needed bone supplies for the whole of Scotland. The identification of donors, collection and storage of bone is done while adhering to the strict guidelines laid down by SNBTS and the Tissue Banking Standards of the British Association of Tissue Banks(BATB).
A detailed donor assessment is essential to prevent the transmission of infection, malignancy, or any disease of unknown aetiology.
Bone is collected from donors undergoing routine total hip or knee replacement operations.
All potential donors have their medical history taken by the Bone Bank Co-ordinator, and consent obtained for the donation of bone and for the blood tests (for HIV, Hepatitis B and C and Syphilis).
Blood is tested at the time of donation and repeated 6 months later to exclude viral infection.
A bone chip and periosteal swab are taken at the time of donation to exclude bacterial infection.
The bone is then stored in a quarantine freezer at –40° to –70° until repeat blood testing is done 6 months later.
If, at the completion of the tests, all is satisfactory, the bone is made available for transplantation.
Then, at the request of the surgeons the bone can be issued for revision surgery, trauma or corrective surgery. The Bone Bank provides safe, high quality and inexpensive bone graft material for the surgeons.
