Ho Chi Minh City: Preserving skull bones for transplantation

Talking to the PV on January 18, Dr. Tran Cong Toai, Vice Chairman of the Department of Embryology at the Ho Chi Minh City Medical Staff Training Center, said the Biological Materials Laboratory of the department after about 5 years, has preserved more than 10,000 pieces of skull bones.

A piece of the skull of the patient was stored at -85 degrees Celsius at the Biomaterial Laboratory.(Photo: VietNamNet)

The Biomaterial Laboratory has developed a program to preserve skull fragments since the year 2000. The bone fragments preserved here will be transplanted back to those patients themselves.

The preserved skull bones here are from people with traffic accidents or patients with cranial pathology.

Dr. Toai said that the laboratory is also ready to receive donated skull fragments, but no one has so far.

Until 2005, more than 5,000 cases were re-implanted from skull bones stored in this place.

Dr. Toai said, Biological Material Laboratory only carries out bone preservation in the spirit of scientific research, so it only collects from the patients about a part of preservation cost of about 100,000-200,000 VND.

Overall, the cost of preserving the skull at the Biomaterial Laboratory averages 80,000 VND / month.

In cases where it is not needed or medical conditions have not yet allowed for immediate surgery, surgeons may designate the preservation of a piece of skull bone to be matched. The piece of skull bone to be assembled will be preserved in this laboratory with the consent of the patient or the patient's relatives.

According to neurosurgeons, a skull that is preserved and recombined for patients will benefit both the patient and the medicine.

Dr.Tran Cong Toai next to "mini skull bone bank " (Photo: VietNamNet)

First of all, in terms of anti-rejection, transplants from the patient's own body, there is no phenomenon of foreign organ transplantation when implanted into the body.

In addition, biological materials are made by artificial methods for grafting up to 3 million VND. So, socially, thanks to the patient's own skull, it was possible to save VND15 billion for 5,000 transplants during the past 5 years.

Skull bones are preserved in cold conditions from -80 ° C or below. Current preservation techniques allow preservation of a patient's skull fragment for 5 years.

In addition, the laboratory also has enough equipment and chemical preservatives ready to continue establishing another bank to receive corneal preservation.

In the future, the laboratory will promote research on fibrous cell culture. The second step is cell transplantation on corals to increase grafting efficiency.

Right in 2006, the Biological Materials Laboratory will cooperate with MS Phan Kim Ngoc of Ho Chi Minh City University of Natural Sciences to study stem cells.

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