Confidentiality
You can be assured that any samples which you donate to our tissue bank for research will be anonymised and no information which could identify you will leave the Trust when your material is sent to a researcher.
Information sheet
We have produced a Participant information sheet which explains more about donating samples. If you wish, you can give your permission for left over material collected as part of your diagnosis or treatment to be donated. You can also agree for additional samples to be collected during your procedure or during your follow-up care, provided that such removal does not create any detrimental effects for you or require you to have any additional procedures. The patient consent form can be viewed here.
There is also a consent form that is used after an emergency procedure and a participant information sheet for after an emergency procedure.
Research ethics approval
Some research projects have their own ethics approval from the National Research Ethics Service to use human material donated by patients specifically for that project. However, many projects do not have this type of approval and could therefore benefit from the use of material donated through the Tissue Bank. Royal Papworth Hospital’s Research Tissue Bank generic research ethics approval allows us to ask patients visiting the Trust if they would be willing to donate certain material (e.g. blood, sputum, unused surgical material) to the Tissue Bank for the purpose of medical research and for the development of new treatments.
Organ donation for transplantation
If you would like to find out more about donating organs for transplantation please click here.