A warning -- this story contains vision of medical procedures. Donating blood is a familiar concept, but bone donation is much less well-known. Despite bone being the second most transplanted tissue, there's a constant shortage in bone banks around the country.
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00:00As conversation starters go, Catherine Doyle-Haley's necklace is a good one.
00:07This is a necklace that I made out of four of the screws that they removed from my spine.
00:12Over the last 40 years, she's had more than 30 spinal surgeries.
00:16When I have x-rays done, I look a bit like the Sydney Harbour Bridge
00:20because there's 22 screws going down and then there's rods here, there and everywhere
00:25and it just connects from one end to the other.
00:27Over the decades, she's both donated and received bone from the Bone Bank.
00:31Racks and racks of bits and pieces of bone, some crunch bones, some femoral head bones,
00:38some segmental bone, things like long bones, bone struts, soft tissue grafts, they're all there.
00:47It's a bit like going to Woolies.
00:49Located at hospitals around the country, like a blood bank,
00:52Bone Banks rely on donors to keep them stocked for bone grafts.
00:57With the hammer, chisel, the saw, the drill, we build the foundations.
01:02In the past, animal bone and coral have been used, but surgeons say human bone is best.
01:08Bone that's implanted into someone gradually but surely gets re-colonised
01:15by the appropriate stem cells from that person, so bone is really clever.
01:21Unfortunately, despite bone being the second most transplanted tissue after blood,
01:27there's a shortage of donors in Australia,
01:29with many not knowing it's even an option after common surgeries like hip replacements.
01:34Of the 50,000 of those performed each year, only 10% are donated.
01:40So with a hip replacement, we remove the old ball
01:43and that ball can then be either discarded or sent off to the Bone Bank.
01:49Well, they're either going to throw it away or they're going to send it to the Bone Bank.
01:54Send it to the Bone Bank, please people.
01:56Connecting the hip bone to the Bone Bank.