To all veterinarians,
Thank you for exploring the new surgical options that a professional veterinary tissue bank can bring to you.
When tissue banking started for humans in the 1950s, it came out of the medical community’s desire to shorten healing times and reduce failure rates in orthopedic cases by using biologically-compatible bone graft while also avoiding pain and complications for the patient associated with autograft procurement. It was not uncommon that taking tissue from the patient caused more post-operative pain and other morbidity than the surgery itself. Additionally, surgeons were restricted by the limited availability of autologous bone tissue. Because of this, a group of doctors explored the options of using bone from tissue donors. This revolutionized human orthopedic surgery because it broadened the horizon for surgical practice and enabled treatment of both simple and complicated cases with sufficient and effective implant material. Today, orthopedic and periodontal surgeons can’t even imagine not having tissue banking services at their disposal. The same is true for the growing group of veterinarians who use our tissue allografts in their orthopedic and periodontal surgeries.
As tissue banking is new to most veterinarians, many ask if it is safe and if it works. The answer is yes on both accounts. Prior to founding VTS, I was responsible for the tissue recoveries and processing for human tissue banks for nearly 12 years and I can say with confidence that we at VTS adhere to the same high Quality Assurance Standards that human tissue banks do. Over the past 10 years, we have distributed tens of thousands of canine and feline grafts without causing a single adverse reaction. A substantial amount of research has been conducted on the effectiveness of bone allografts since the 1950’s. The list of studies is long and the majority show accelerated healing compared to no grafting and that there is no difference in long-term outcome between autograft and allograft bone. This is why there are over 1 million surgeries that use bone allografts in humans every year and hundreds of veterinarians using allografts from VTS.
I invite you to join the group of veterinarians who take advantage of modern tissue banking. You will be able to expand your surgical options and to have more graft available to accelerate healing and improve chances for success of your cases. At the same time, you will also eliminate the risk of complications and pain caused by autograft procurement – just because dogs and cats cannot tell us whether or not they are in pain, we cannot simply assume they are not. Allograft is simple to order and simple to use. Your patients will be thankful. And so will your clients.
Yours sincerely,
Helen Newman, PhD, CTBS
Founder