A Tissue Bank, virtually a recycling factory for human tissues, will be set up in the city before the year is out. Tissues of the human body, which otherwise go waste, will be retrieved, screened, processed and stored by the bank as allografts to be made available for orthopedic, cardiac, plastic and gynaecological procedures.
A tissue is defined as a collection of interconnected cells that perform a similar function within an organism. And, in the first phase, the bank will store allografts of skin, bone, tendon, ligament, heart valves, muscular skeletal tissue and amnion, which can be obtained from deceased and living donors. 
Such a bank’s potential is multifold as 60 to 80 per cent of deformities can be corrected by allografts. Experts like Dr Astrid Lobo Gajiwala, Head of the Tissue Bank, Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) and vice-president of Asia-Pacific Association of Surgical Tissue Banks, say skin obtained from abdominoplasties can be used in dressing burns and chronic ulcer patients.
The amnion detached from the placenta after a woman gives birth is an excellent biological dressing for wounds. Bone allografts can be prepared from the femoral head when a patient undergoes revision hip replacement surgery or amputations. From preventing amputation in tumours or grafting ‘un-united’ fractures to correcting kyphosis (curved spine), bone allografts can be useful.
Funding
Lions District 324 D6 Service Foundation has been registered to oversee the activities and the funding for this Rs 1-crore project. The Lions International Funding has released Rs 40 lakh to kickstart the project and the rest will be raised by the Trust internally, says past International Director Ranganathan.
The bank is the brainchild of Dr Niranjan Gowda of the Zonal Co-ordination Committee of Karnataka for Transplantation, who is certified by the American Association of Tissue Banks, US.
Only a handful of City surgeons have had access to allografts, particularly bone, from banks across the country, courtesy limited donors.
In the absence of allografts, surgeons use autografts (using the patients’ own bone), says TMH Orthopedic Oncosurgeon, Dr Manish Agarwal. This means another surgery to harvest this bone and more time and pain at the donor site. Metallic implants, though used, cost several lakh rupees.
Downside
On the downside, bone allografts have a higher risk of infection and fracture. Synthetic heart valves used by many surgeons also face the risk of developing blockages in the main artery and, to prevent this, the patient has to be on drugs for the rest of his life, says Dr Niranjan.
While it is hard to say how many such banks exist in India -- there is no central monitoring body -- the tissue demand-availability gap is huge, notes Dr Gajiwala. A tissue bank will spark greater awareness and more surgeons will perform operations with banked bones due to higher availability, says Dr Sanjay Pai of Wockhardt Hospital.
 As with retrieval of any other organs, awareness remains this project's biggest challenge.