California Transplant Services, Inc. Worldwide service, local attention

California Transplant Services, Inc. is a non-profit full service eye and tissue bank offering physicians worldwide, the highest quality tissue for transplant available. California Transplant Services is accredited by the American Association of Tissue Banks. Our 24 hour available service center maintains the Cornea Transplant Registry.

Among the tissues we provide are corneas for trauma and cornea blindness repair, bone for orthopedic and reconstructive surgery, skin for burn and trauma surgery, and tendons and ligaments for sports medicine. Our surgical procurement teams recover transplant tissue from voluntary donors utilizing aseptic surgical techniques.

California Transplant is proud to offer the only structured Autologous Tissue Storage (ATS) program in California for trauma and surgical patients.

California Transplant Services, Inc. is a California Non Profit Public Benefit Corporation and operates under a license from the State of California, Department of Health Services as a Human Tissue Preservation Laboratory (#CNC80141).

For tissue availability and patient registration, call toll free at 1-800-92-TISSUE (800-928-4778) from within the USA.

Program Profile

California Transplant Services, Inc. (CTS) is a California non-profit public benefit corporation qualified by the IRS as a section 501(c)3 charitable organization, licensed by the California Department of Health Services as a Human Tissue Preservation Laboratory and registered and inspected by the United States Food and Drug Administration. We were most recently inspected by the FDA in June 2005 with no citations or 483 violations indicated. We were also inspected by the American Association of Tissue Banks in September of 2003 and awarded Accreditation in December 2003. We are registered in California with the Office of Charitable Trusts.

California Transplant Services is a full service eye and tissue bank headquartered in Southern California. CTS recovers donor tissue from cadaver organ and tissue donors at hospitals in San Diego, and Orange County and its Arizona Transplant Services division recovers eye and tissue from donors throughout the state of Arizona for transplant and research.

CTS's donor hospitals have selected CTS to provide tissue recovery services in conjunction with our local organ procurement agency OneLegacy, in Southern California. Hospitals in Arizona have selected the Arizona Transplant Services division to recover tissue from donors at their facilities.

Most of CTS California Transplant's fulltime staff are Certified Tissue Bank Specialists (CTBS) by the AATB or Certified Eye Bank Technicians (CEBT) by the Eye Bank Association of America. CTS staffing includes fulltime and part time tissue procurement specialists. CTS helps tissue banks by providing 24 hour tissue placement services from it's west coast USA distribution center. CTS has provided cornea and bone tissue placement services since 1994.

Physicians completing the online National Cornea Transplant Registry form are offered tissue for their patients from the pool of "tissue available for distribution" tissue from eye and tissue banks. CTS coordinates and is responsible for all courier, airline flight or Federal Express arrangements including reroute of tissue when a flight or surgery is cancelled.

Every fulltime transplant coordinator also carries a wireless internet device capable of tracking shipments.

CTS has been designated by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as a "Known Shipper" with most major airlines such as United Airlines, United Shuttle, United Express, Lufthansa, British Airways, Delta, Continental, America West and US Airways and therefore can provide the most direct routing of emergency shipments.

Our proximity to seven major airports and two international airports makes shipping easy worldwide. In fact, we are located at the Carlsbad Airport Center which is serviced by United Airlines and US Airways.

CTS supports the activities of the EBAA. CTS provides a valuable service to the community and EBAA member eye banks by making available to surgeons tissue for surgery that might not have been utilized.