Tissue donation after death includes several different products which can be life-enhancing (such as tendons) or life-saving (such as heart valves), with an individual tissue donor being able to potentially help many different patients. Different to organ donation, tissue donation can take place up to several hours after death; this means that the number of potential tissue donors is much higher than that of organ donors, although careful attention to body cooling after death is required to ensure that the quality and safety of the tissue products is maintained. It is important to ensure that appropriate consent is in place prior to proceeding with tissue retrieval. Further, due to the nature of deceased donation, information provided at the time of donation as to the medical, behavioural and travel history of the donor is necessarily second hand, making it very important that all available information on the donor is reviewed and assessed (including speaking to the donor’s family and family doctor, reviewing medical records and post-mortem as appropriate) to ensure a full risk–benefit assessment is carried out prior to releasing the donation for clinical use. Tissue retrieval requires well trained staff to ensure that the products are not damaged during the retrieval process; and finally due care and attention is required when taking blood samples for donor testing of mandatory markers of infection to ensure that the blood samples taken are truly representative of the donor’s infectious disease status.