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Organ donation involves donating an organ or tissue from one person (donor) to another (recipient). The recipient is an individual requiring a transplant due to a severe medical condition or an organ failure. Organ donation is a noble act. It helps save and enhance lives by replacing damaged or non-functional organs with healthy ones.
Organ donation has evolved over the years to be available in different types. Let’s run through the most important ones.
It involves a healthy person donating an organ or part of an organ while still alive. Some common organs include the kidney (one kidney as a person can stay alive with a single kidney), liver (a portion of it as the liver regenerates), lung (a lobe), pancreas (a portion), and intestine (a portion).
This is the most common type of organ donation. It takes place when an individual is declared brain dead, meaning all the activities of the brain are irreversibly ceased. However, even in this case, some organs stay functional with the help of life support. Some common ones that an individual can donate include liver, lungs, heart, kidneys, pancreas, and intestines.
This involves donating after the heart and breathing have stopped irreversibly. But some organs that a deceased donor can donate after DCD include liver, pancreas, and kidneys. Under some specific protocols, doctors can even consider lungs and heart.
This is another type of organ donation although it is categorized separately from it. By donating tissues, the donor can potentially save up to eight lives. After death, donors can donate tissues like corneas, bones, skin, and heart valves to recipients suffering from blindness, burns, and orthopedic concerns. One can store tissues for a longer period than organs.
When a living donor’s kidney doesn’t match the intended recipient, they can participate in a paired exchange program. In this program, multiple donor-recipient pairs swap kidneys for compatibility.
As the name suggests, in this type of donation, the donor chooses to donate to a particular recipient like a family member, friend, or even a stranger they know. However, as in the case of every other donation type, doctors assess the organ’s suitability, safety, and appropriacy. It is most common with living donations like part of the liver or kidney.
This type of donation involves a child as the donor or recipient. It usually involves numerous specific considerations due to the size matching required to conduct a successful transplantation.
Also called VCA, it includes transplanting multiple structures, including bone, blood veins, skin, nerves, and connective tissues together as a functional unit. Unlike traditional organ transplants, VCA often involves body parts like face, arms, hands, abdominal wall, genitals, etc. Vascularized means connecting blood vessels surgically to restore circulation in the transplanted tissue. Composite involves different tissue types in a combination. On the other hand, allograft refers to taking a tissue from a donor of the same species.
Whole Body Donation plays a vital role in advancing medical science, helping doctors, surgeons, and students gain practical knowledge and improve healthcare treatments. It is considered one of the greatest contributions to humanity, as a single body donation can educate and benefit countless future medical professionals.
Kidney paired donation serves as an option for kidney transplant candidates who have a willing donor but unfortunately an incompatible one. It involves two or more donor-recipient pairs. Each donor is incompatible with the recipient intended. However, the donor from one pair is compatible with the recipient from the other pair and vice versa. Thus, the procedure involves swapping kidneys with each recipient receiving a compatible kidney from the donor of the other pair. This type of donation benefits in different ways, including;
Let’s look at some important global facts about organ donation.
One Donor Can Save 75 Lives
Anyone Can Register as an Organ Donor
Donating Organs is Free
A Recipient Can Get More than One New Organ
Green Corridor
Organ donation has been around for decades. A few of the earliest pieces of evidence include researchers experimenting (on a trial-and-error basis) with organ donations in the 18th century. However, by the mid-20th century, scientists were performing successful surgeries. Today, the world has reached a stage where organ transplants have become common. We must thank the extensive and painstaking efforts researchers made in the past to help us reach where we are today, particularly concerning organ transplants.
Let’s look at a few milestones in the world of organ donation.
First simultaneous kidney/pancreas transplant
First successful liver transplant
First successful isolated pancreas transplant and heart transplant
First successful heart-lung transplant
First single-lung transplant
First successful intestinal transplant
First split-liver transplant
First successful living donor liver transplant
First successful living donor lung transplant
First adult-to-adult living donor liver transplant performed successfully
