Donorship at the Heart Tissue Bank
By registering as a donor with the Heart Tissue Bank, you give permission to have your heart stored in the Heart Tissue Bank after death. This requires an obduction. During an obduction, the heart is taken out after which it’s stored at the Heart Tissue Bank by researchers for scientific research purposes. The Heart Tissue Bank needs your permission to perform this obduction. As a donor of the Heart Tissue Bank, you do not need an additional hospital visit or undergo an examination.
To be able to perform good scientific research, it is important that the Heart Tissue Bank also has access to your medical data. Therefore, the Heart Tissue Bank requests your permission to view and process your medical data after death. This data and the heart tissue are available to researchers in pseudonymised form. In other words, a unique code is assigned to the data and the tissue, so that they cannot be directly traced back to a person.
How do I register?
You can request the registration forms on this website. Please notice, currently only native speakers of the Dutch language who live in the Netherlands can register as future donor with the Heart Tissue Bank. Read more >>
For donors
Information about the procedure after death, medical data and withdrawal of your consent. Read more >>
Multiple forms of organ donation
Multiple forms of organ donation are known. For example, if you are an organ donor for transplant purposes as well, transplantation will always have priority over heart donation for scientific research via the Heart Tissue Bank. Read more >>
Collaboration with the Netherlands Brain Bank
The Heart Tissue Bank and the Netherlands Brain Bank work closely together. Read more >>