FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                   

For more information, contact:

The University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Communications and Marketing

Sheila Champlin – (901) 448-4957 or

Dena Owens – (901) 448-4072

 

 

Mid South Eye Bank Relocates to

 The University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Memphis Campus
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Memphis, Tenn. (January 6, 2010) – Mid South Eye Bank for Sight Restoration, Inc., has moved its offices to 920 Madison, Suite 800, on the campus of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC).  The non-profit group is dedicated to providing corneal tissue for transplant and ocular tissue for research.  The Mid South Eye Bank also promotes and supports community education relative to organ, tissue and eye donation. 

Located in the heart of the Memphis Medical Center near downtown, UTHSC has renovated more than 3,500 square feet of space to meet the eye bank’s laboratory, office and meeting space needs.  Renovation costs were assumed by UTHSC and not passed on to its new non-profit tenant. 

            With the support of the UT Health Science Center, the seven staff members who operate the Mid South Eye Bank have a new home from which to continue to provide vision-saving services to the community.  The eye bank generally supports more than 300 surgeries each year, using tissue recovered locally and tissue from other Eye Bank Association of America-accredited eye banks across the nation.

            To accomplish this task, the Mid South Eye Bank employs surgical technologists who are available 24/7 to recover tissue, to advise nursing staffs regarding matters of donation, and to ensure the orderly delivery of tissue to the eye bank for screening testing and placement with transplanting surgeons.  The eye bank has been a resource for physicians since 1946 and continues to provide quality corneal tissue for sight-saving surgery.

            “The move of the Mid South Eye Bank to the UT Health Science Center campus is incredibly beneficial for our organization and will be equally beneficial for the patients we serve,” said Glen Mullins, Director of Hospital Development.  “Our organization will be located adjacent to the UT Hamilton Eye Institute where many of our doctors, nurses and eye technicians work.  That’s sure to lead to even greater collaboration with the professionals who teach, engage in leading-edge research, provide clinical care and serve the public through this world-renowned eye institute.”

            Each year the Hamilton Eye Institute is consistently ranked among the top 10 ophthalmology providers across the nation in clinical care.  As a premier university eye center providing an advanced level of vision care, the institute’s 28 physicians and eye specialists train roughly 150 medical students and manage more than 40,000 outpatient visits annually.

            The Mid South Eye Bank works with and within almost all the hospitals in Memphis, West Tennessee, Eastern Arkansas and Desoto County, Miss., to recover eye tissue from consenting donors’ families and to promote donation among the staffs of those hospitals.  They provide tissue to physicians regionally and nationwide but its core of physicians are in West Tennessee.   For more information about the Mid South Eye Bank, call (901) 448-8264 or visit www.msebtn.org. 

As the flagship statewide academic health system, the mission of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center is to bring the benefits of the health sciences to the achievement and maintenance of human health, with a focus on the citizens of Tennessee and the region, by pursuing an integrated program of education, research, clinical care, and public service.   Offering a broad range of postgraduate training opportunities, the main campus is located in Memphis and includes six colleges: Allied Health Sciences, Dentistry, Graduate Health Sciences, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy.  UTHSC has additional colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy plus an Allied Health Sciences unit in Knoxville, as well as a College of Medicine campus in Chattanooga.  For more information, visit www.uthsc.edu.

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