Assessing bone banking activities at University of Malaya medical centre Suhaili Mohd • Sharifah Mazni Samsuddin • Saravana Ramalingam • Ng Wuey Min • Norimah Yusof • T. Kamarul Zaman • Azura Mansor Received: 4 June 2014 / Accepted: 31 January 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 Abstract The main advantage of establishing in- house bone banks is its ability to readily provide allograft bones for local surgeries. Bone procurement activities of our university bone bank during the 10 years of operation were reviewed. Socio-demo- graphic data of donors, types of bone procured, cases of rejected bones and types of allograft bones trans- planted are presented. From 179 potential donors, 73 % were accepted with 213 procured bones. Femoral head was the common bone transplanted (45 %), as it was also the most common procured (82 %). Bones were rejected mainly due to non- technical reasons (83 %) rather than positive results of microbiological (13 %) and serological (4 %) tests. Comprehensive data could not be obtained for further analysis due to difficulties in retrieving information. Therefore, quality assurance system was improved to establish more systematic documentations, as the basis of good banking practice with process control hence allowing traceability. Keywords Bone bank Á Procurement Á Allograft Á Rejection Á Traceability Introduction Allograft bone is the best alternative to autograft bone due to its favourable biological characteristics as compared to ceramics and other synthetic mate- rials. For this reason and due to the limited supply of autograft bone and risk of donor site morbidity, allograft bone has been frequently the choice for transplantation in the past 20 years (Abbas et al. 2007). Allograft bone was previously used mainly for spinal fusion surgery, however in the 1980s orthopaedic surgeons started to use allograft bones in reconstructing defects during revision hip arthro- plasty and for fracture surgery (Tomford 2000). The demand for allograft bone has increased in recent years as primary hip arthroplasty is being performed in younger patients, thus the case of revision hip surgery keeps increasing (Abbas et al. 2007; O’Sullivan 1993). Allograft bone has also been used for various disciplines of surgery including the reconstruction of large bone and joint defects (Vajaradul 2000). Bones supplied by in-house bone banks have been proven to be cost-effective and able to broaden the spectrum of orthopaedic surgeries that can be per- formed by the hospital (Meermans et al. 2007). However, limitation in resources can lead to poor performance of these in-house bone banks especially in fulfilling surgeons’ demands in time. The estab- lishment of a centralized bone bank with well- qualified staff, facilities and appropriate equipment S. Mohd (&) Á S. M. Samsuddin Á S. Ramalingam Á N. W. Min Á N. Yusof Á T. K. Zaman Á A. Mansor UMMC Bone Bank, National Orthopaedic Centre of Excellence in Research and Learning (NOCERAL), Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia e-mail: suhailimohd@ummc.edu.my 123 Cell Tissue Bank DOI 10.1007/s10561-015-9499-4