PORTLAND (AP) – Eleven patients at two Lewiston hospitals were among 14 statewide who may have received bone grafts from tissue that was never screened for infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, according to a report broadcast Friday on a local TV station.

The tissue came from New Jersey-based Biomedical Tissue Services, which faces a 122-count criminal indictment in connection with allegedly harvesting and selling stolen body parts, WCSH said.

Six patients undergoing back, neck or joint surgery may have received the illegal tissue at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston. Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston may have had five and Maine Medical Center in Portland, three, the station said.

One of the recipients, Rhonda Ames of Benton, said she will be screened for infectious diseases for the next year and that tests so far have come back negative. But she expressed outrage that bone filler used to repair her back may have been made from stolen body parts. The report did not specify where Ames received her treatment.

“I was angry at the people that did this, that took the bones, not only for myself but for the corpses, the people that were violated even though they were dead,” Ames said.

The hospitals received the tissue from a supplier in Florida, which reportedly sterilized it, reducing the risk of infection.

Patients who received tissue transplants or bone grafts at any hospital in Maine in 2004 or 2005 were advised to contact their doctor or the hospital where the procedure was done.

The Food and Drug Administration closed Biomedical Tissue Services last month, saying it had evidence that the company failed to screen for contaminated tissue.

While maintaining that the risk was minimal, the agency cautioned that patients that received the company’s products could have been exposed to disease.

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