American Association of Tissue Banks

The American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB) is a nonprofit transplant trade organization that is dedicated to ensuring that human tissues intended for transplantation are safe and free of infectious disease, of uniform high quality, and available in quantities sufficient to meet national needs. AATB is located in McLean, Virginia. It was founded in 1976 and consists of 1,100 members.^[1]

The AATB provides accreditation for over 100 tissue banks. According to their website, AATB is a voluntary association of organizations committed to obtaining tissues for allografts (transplant) and providing the general public and the medical community with the safest products possible. The program is not regulatory in nature, but educational.^[2]^[3]

The AATB also accommodates accreditation to non-transplant tissue banks and whole body donation programs.^[4]

To avoid violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, AATB must through their legal anatomical authorizations obtain consent which allows AATB representatives access to donor information for accreditation reviews.

The AATB recovered around 17,000 donor grafts in 1996, and in 23,000, this number increased to about 23,000 donor grafts and around 1.3 million musculoskeletal grafts were distributed.^[5]

References

^ "American Association of Tissue Banks - National Organization for Rare Disorders". rarediseases.org. 2022-08-11. Retrieved 2024-09-15.
^ "AATB: About Us". American Association of Tissue Banks. Archived from the original on October 17, 2007. Retrieved 2008-11-03.
^ Squires, Sally (1993-10-19). "Congress Looks at Tissue Transplants". The Washington Post. pp. Z.07. Archived from the original on May 25, 2011. Retrieved 2008-11-03.
^ "Non-transplant Anatomical Donation | American Association of Tissue Banks". www.aatb.org. Retrieved 2024-09-13.
^ Vangsness, C. Thomas (2010). "Allografts". Noyes' Knee Disorders: Surgery, Rehabilitation, Clinical Outcomes: 240–244. doi:10.1016/B978-1-4160-5474-0.00009-6. PMC 7310937.