Allograft bone transplantation: a Sheffield experience.

There has been an increase in demand for allograft bone in recent years. This type of bone provides an excellent material to fill in bony defects, but could be associated with an incidence of infection. Any newly established tissue bank has to meet the very stringent criteria to process and store bone and maintain a donor and recipient database to avoid transmission of infection. The Sheffield Tissue Bank has been functioning since 1989 and until 1993 has provided bone allografts to 220 patients; these have been used mainly to reconstruct defects at revision hip and knee arthroplasty and for scoliosis surgery. There have been no cases of disease transmission and the rate of infection has been reduced by strict screening protocols. This paper outlines our experience, problems and success with human bone banking.