More than 40 British patients have received tissue from body parts stolen in the United States, it has been confirmed.
Hospitals in England and Wales released details of how many patients had received bone graft tissue - which is used as a filler in orthopaedic surgery such as hip replacements and jaw construction.
There were concerns that the material could be contaminated but the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) insisted the risk was minimal.
Late last year, the US Food and Drug Administration ordered a recall of potentially tainted products and warned that patients could have been exposed to HIV and other diseases.
Now, the MHRA, which alerted hospitals last year, said there was little risk to British patients.
A spokesman added: "The issue in the US about potential infection risks was different because there was a much wider range of tissues involved rather than the bone graft tissue distributed in the UK."
The body of veteran BBC broadcaster Alistair Cooke was one of more than a thousand plundered by a corpse-snatching ring in New York, which then sold bones, ligaments and skin for use in transplants.
Last October it emerged that New Jersey-based Biomedical Tissue Services (BTS), the company accused of being at the heart of the scandal, exported 82 lots of human material to the UK last year.
The 82 products in question were distributed to hospitals by a Swindon-based firm called Plus Orthopedics, the MRHA said.
On Wednesday, the MHRA listed 25 hospitals that had received the products after deciding the public interest outweighed the potential breach of affected graft patients' confidentiality.
