Donated bone and tissue can improve healing.
Tissue transplants help treat a host of orthopedic, cardiovascular, and neurological defects, degenerative conditions, and injuries.
- Skin grafts aid burn victims and can be lifesaving, providing pain relief and a barrier to infection for these patients.
- Large bone allografts can prevent amputation for many patients with bone cancer and serious traumatic injuries.
- Smaller bone and soft tissue grafts are more common and have many uses in a variety of procedures such as spinal fusions, joint replacements, and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) repairs.
- Heart valves offer children and adults an alternative to prosthetic valve transplants that require patients to take lifelong anticoagulant (blood thinning) medication.
Donated tissue often functions better than artificial alternatives.
Donated tissue shares more qualities with your body than synthetic substances do, and it encourages healing. Receiving allograft tissue can be preferable to using tissue from another part of the patient's own body. In many spinal surgeries, for example, donated tissue eliminates the need for another surgical incision in the patient's pelvis to retrieve an autograft. On average, patients who receive donated bone have shorter hospital stays and reduced infection rates.
For patients with problems involving ligaments and cartilage surfaces, allografts are often the best option for returning to "normal" functioning.