Bradford hospitals' top doctors have reassured the city's public that they have never kept organs for research or education.

Dr Brian Naylor, head of the pathology department at Bradford Hospitals NHS Trust, said organs needing to be removed during post-mortem examinations were examined as part of the procedure and then disposed of.

In certain cases, when the coroner was involved, organs had to be kept for a certain period for medico-legal reasons. For example, a lung might be kept in a case of industrial disease connected with asbestos exposure.

One mother whose child had died more than a decade ago had telephoned the trust's medical director, Dr Michael Smith, to ask about organ retention, he said, but the trust had received no letters on the issue.

And Dr Smith said that consent was an important part of the trust's work. "The whole ethos here is we must ask the patient," he explained.

The whole issue of organ retention has been top of the agenda after the revelations that hearts had been removed from babies and kept for educational purposes without parents' knowledge in Bristol. An inquiry into the issue condemned the practice.

And pressure group the National Committee relating to Organ Retention - set up by parents whose children died at Bristol Royal Infirmary - said it had been contacted by a family whose relative had undergone a post-mortem examination in Bradford, but could not give more details.

Dr Naylor said Bradford's hospitals had never been bases for research and had never kept a collection of organs.

But small specimens were kept in paraffin blocks from all samples taken at operations, biopsies or during post-mortem examinations, he said.

In 1999, Bradford pathologists conducted 44 hospital post-mortems, which are carried out when a senior doctor believes more information about the disease could be obtained.

Relatives have to give consent, which is in two parts, one of which specifies that whole organs might be removed.

Dr Naylor said some relatives agreed to a limited post-mortem where only the affected parts are examined. He added that pathologists would always abide by parents' requests.

The whole topic of patients and relatives giving informed consent for procedures had changed and become more open over the years as society changed, said Dr Naylor.

And the trust's own guidelines for junior doctors state that pressure must never be put on relatives to agree to a hospital post-mortem examination.

e-mail: jan.winter

@bradford.newsquest.co.uk

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