Management of regional bone bank during declaration of a state of emergency concerning the COVID-19 in Japan.
Bone banks are necessary for providing biological allografts for a series of orthopedic procedures. As nations cope with new realities driven by the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, health-care providers, institutions, and patients share a particular concern about the effect of COVID-19 on organ donation and transplantation. Here, we describe the management of the Kitasato University Bone Bank during the state of emergency declared in response to COVID-19. Living donors received pre-operative screening by PCR, and allograft bone from COVID-19-negative donors was cryopreserved as transplantable tissues. The weekly rate of infection gradually increased from February 2-9 to April 5-11 in the dead donor-derived allograft bone-harvesting region covered by the Bank. It is becoming clear that the virus can be transmitted by asymptomatic patients, and that this route may have facilitated the spread of COVID-19. Therefore, the Bank stopped dead donor donation to consider the safety of medical staff. Three recipients received bone allografts following pre-operative COVID-19 screening by PCR. All patients were asymptomatic after bone allograft. Our experience may provide helpful information for the management of tissue banks.
['Uchida|Kentaro|K|http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5148-914X', 'Mukai|Manabu|M|', 'Miyagi|Masayuki|M|', 'Fukushima|Kensuke|K|', 'Uchiyama|Katsufumi|K|', 'Nakayama|Akiko|A|', 'Matsumoto|Mai|M|', 'Takahira|Naonobu|N|', 'Urabe|Ken|K|', 'Takaso|Masashi|M|', 'Inoue|Gen|G|']
D018586:Bone Banks D000086382:COVID-19 D006801:Humans D007564:Japan D019520:Living Donors D000086402:SARS-CoV-2
Bone bank COVID-19 Allograft bone