Resource Newsletter Archive
Patients, hospitals to benefit from new Tissue Services partnerships
The Tissue Services will soon provide (from top): Grafton® Crunch, MTF DBX paste and MTF/Synthes spacers, including the T-PLIF (shown)
“We're the community tissue bank and we're dedicated to providing the best care, service and products,” says Northwest Tissue Services Director Margery Moogk.
In keeping with that longstanding commitment, the Tissue Services recently entered into agreements that will make proprietary tissue products more accessible to patients in the hospitals it serves.
The new partnerships are with the nonprofit Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation (MTF) and with Osteotech, Inc. Both are accredited by the American Association of Tissue Banks.
“There are remarkable advances being made with the kind of tissue products that have been developed in recent years,” says Moogk. “They promote faster healing, reduce surgery time and shorten hospital stays.
“We want to be able to offer all of those improvements and add to that our reassurance that these products come from tissues that meet our donor suitability requirements, have been recovered according to our standards, and are processed by partners in whom we have a high degree of confidence.”
The new agreements come at the end of a lengthy process. Tissue Services executives explored many possible processing partnerships before signing contracts with MTF and Osteotech. “Each of our new partners has a demonstrated history of good tissue banking practices,” says Moogk. “We were also influenced by the fact that they both provide their innovative products widely throughout our region to hospitals and clinicians who have been pleased with them.
“And each recognizes the importance of maintaining the public trust, both in terms of quality and safety and also in terms of ethical tissue banking. We chose partners who are strong and responsible.”
The Tissue Services will be providing the Grafton® Matrix allografts
Products and benefits MTF will process Tissue Services-provided bone into precisely tooled bone grafts that are easily implanted during spinal surgery using matching instrumentation. Developed by MTF and Synthes Spine, L.P, these intervertebral spacers enable surgeons to perform less invasive spinal fusion surgeries to alleviate chronic back pain and limited mobility caused by various spinal disorders and injuries. The spacers restore normal spinal alignment and facilitate fusion.
MTF will also process demineralized cortical bone into its DBX line of pastes and putties, and a mix that contains cancellous bone. These easy-to-use products are osteoinductive and biocompatible.
Osteotech's Grafton® brand of demineralized bone matrices (DBM) was the first on the market and has been used extensively in this region. Osteotech will process Tissue Services-provided bone into osteoinductive and conductive graft materials of various types, including DBM gel, paste, putty, and matrix. Osteoinductive allografts recruit bone-forming cells, and osteoconductive ones provide the scaffolding on which the new bone can grow.
These demineralized bone allografts are being used in a variety of orthopedic, neuro, and reconstructive surgeries, as well as in many dental procedures where new bone growth is important.
With both of these partners, the Tissue Services will determine donor suitability before releasing the tissue to be processed. The processors will confirm that the final products meet their specifications and return them.
“In both relationships,” Moogk continued, “some issues were non-negotiable for us. We are committed to providing allografts from bone we recover in our community, so we can be confident that donor suitability, recovery, processing, serological screening and microbiological testing comply with our rigorous policies and procedures. We sought partners who respect that objective.”
Equally important to the Tissue Services in negotiating these new partnerships was control over distribution. “We have always promised our hospitals first access to these life-enhancing allografts for their patients who need transplants. And, our donor families expect we will ensure that their gifts are treated with respect, providing them fairly and equitably.”
Hospitals will continue to see the Synthes sales consultants and Osteotech's agents, who have been representing our partners. Orders for these innovative allografts will come to the Tissue Services and be filled according to the same first-come, first-served basis as other tissues.
For Northwest patients and hospitals, tissue availability will increase, as will the timeliness of delivery, while the products will continue to maintain the high quality the Tissue Services demands and is known for.
Even patients in other areas of the country will benefit. “These tissue products are in short supply everywhere,” says Moogk.
“With the new agreements, our partners won't have to allocate tissue recovered elsewhere to making their products for this region. MTF and Osteotech can redirect their inventories to meet other needs nationwide. Now we will meet regional needs with tissues donated here.”