In addition to having a monopoly on blood products in the provinces, Héma-Québec will soon be solely responsible for the distribution of human tissues for all hospitals in Quebec. He will add this string to his bow from December 2024.
This mandate was granted by the Ministry of Health and Social Services. Hospitals have already been informed that Héma-Québec will soon be solely responsible for tissue distribution. The organization has already been involved in tissue collection and processing activities since 2001.
Some hospitals contact Héma-Québec to place their order or they go elsewhere if the organization is not able to provide them with the requested tissues. In other cases, hospitals have the task of identifying suppliers and haggling with them to obtain supplies.
Approximately 50 to 60% of all tissues used in the hospital network in Quebec come from donors collected and prepared by Héma-Québec. The rest comes from suppliers outside Quebec, mainly in the American market.
From December, “hospitals will no longer have to search left and right” for the tissues they need. Héma-Québec will take care of identifying suppliers and ensuring the quality and safety of the products.
But the primary goal of centralizing distribution is to ensure complete traceability of all human tissues used in hospitals, as has already been done for several years for blood products.
“In terms of obvious impact for the patient, there will be none, except that he will be able to be reassured that the tissues which will be used for a transplant will have been validated, that they come from a reliable source and that the quality will be there, declared Marc Germain, vice-president of medical affairs and innovation at Héma-Québec. And if there is a quality issue, Héma-Québec will be there to carry out the necessary investigations to identify the source of the problem and correct the situation if necessary. »
Human tissues do not have the same requirements as organs. Unlike organs, they should not be removed while the heart is still beating or immediately after cardiac circulation has stopped.
“We have up to 24 hours after the cessation of vital functions to collect the tissues,” indicates Mr. Germain. We also do not have to worry about a rejection phenomenon in the recipient because the tissues are not very vascularized. There is some immune reaction, but it is far from what we see for the organs. »
This means that there is a much larger pool of potential donors for human tissues than for organs. About 30 to 50% of deceased people can provide adequate tissue for a transplant, compared to 1.5% for organs, maintains Mr. Germain.
When we talk about human tissues, the most used in the health network are corneas — which were rarely transplanted about ten years ago in Quebec — skin, which saves the lives of severe burn victims, bones, which are often used in orthopedic surgery among other things for hip replacements, tendons, mainly used in sports medicine, as well as heart and pulmonary valves.
There is no waiting list problem for the majority of human tissues with the exception of pulmonary valves which are increasingly used by surgeons who are abandoning artificial valves for all kinds of advantages. “We began to identify American suppliers who could have surpluses of pulmonary valves to be able to supply the Quebec network,” explained Mr. Germain.
“If there is a wait (for the tissues), it is more linked to the fact that it takes up a place in the operating room, but it is not because there is a lack of tissues that it type of surgery is usually delayed,” he says.
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reference: www.lapresse.ca