CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – The state has uncovered more cases in which New Hampshire patients received, or may have received, transplants from tissue stolen from dead bodies, health officials said Friday.

Thirty-three patients in New Hampshire are known to have received transplants using stolen tissue, health Commissioner John Stephen said. In 12 other cases, investigators have not yet determined whether stolen tissue shipped to the state was used in transplants, he said.

Six patients undergoing back, neck or joint surgery may have received the illegal tissue at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine. Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston may have had five and Maine Medical Center in Portland, three, according to a broadcast report earlier this month.

The first cases in New Hampshire involved Elliot Hospital and Catholic Medical Center in Manchester and Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon. Health department spokesman Greg Moore said Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, Concord Hospital and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon now have been added to the list.

Stephen said high-level officials in his department have worked tirelessly for a week and a half to ensure that hospitals and other responsible parties notified all affected patients promptly and offered them follow-up testing.

Hospitals in New Hampshire and many other states learned they received tissue or bone from a New Jersey firm, Biomedical Tissue Services, whose owner faces charges of cutting up cadavers and selling the stolen tissue without testing it.

Federal officials closed the company last month.

The tissue – typically skin, bone and tendons – was used in a variety of common procedures like dental implants and hip replacements.

Though experts say there is “a very low probability” of adverse health effects from the implants, Stephen said he has insisted on prompt notice to patients and offers of testing.

“We just consider this a public health issue of such importance that everybody must at least be given the opportunity to be screened,” he said.

The department has set up a telephone hotline for those with questions: (603) 271-4496.