Organ Transplant: And Types of Donors
Organ transplantation refers to a medical procedure where an organ is taken from one person and then placed in another. To replace an absent or injured organ is done. Organ Transplant can be transferred from one donor site to another, or the donor and recipient could be in the same place. Autografts are organs and/or tissue that are transplanted into the same body as the donor. Allografts are transplants between two people of the same species. Allografts may be either from a living or cadaveric donor.
The heart, kidney, and liver have all been successfully transplanted. Tissues can include bone, tendons, cornea, skin, nerves, veins, heart valves, nerves, and skin. The kidneys are the most frequently transplanted organs worldwide, followed closely by the liver and heart. The most frequently transplanted tissue is the corneal and musculoskeletal, which outnumber organ transplants more than tenfold.
Organ donors can be either brain dead, living, or deceased via circulatory death. Tissue can be obtained from donors who have died of circulatory death or brain death up to 24 hours after the cessation of heartbeat. Most tissues, except corneas, can be stored and preserved for up to years year, so they can be “banked” unlike organs.
Transplantation raises many bioethical questions, such as the definition of death and when and how consent should have been given to allow an organ to be donated. Also, payment for organs that are being transplanted can be a problem. Other ethical concerns include transplantation tourism (medical tourists) and, more generally speaking, the socio-economic contexts in which organ procurement and transplantation might occur. Organ trafficking is a particular problem. It is important to not offer false hope to patients.
Modern medicine has made transplantation medicine one of the most complex and difficult areas. One of the most important areas of medical management is transplant rejection. This occurs when the body develops an immune reaction to the transplanted organ. It can lead to Organ Transplant failure or the need to remove from its recipient. Transplant rejection can be controlled by serotyping to find the best donor-recipient match, and the use of immunosuppressant medications.
Types of donors
Organ donors can be alive or dead from brain death, circulatory death, or other causes. Most deceased donors have been deemed to be brain-dead. The loss of brain activity is known as brain death. This can occur after sustaining a traumatic injury to the brain or cutting off blood flow to the brain.
Artificial sources maintain breathing, which in turn maintains the heartbeat. After brain death is declared, Organ Transplant donation can be considered. Criteria for brain death vary. The overwhelming majority of US deaths due to brain death are not eligible for organ donation. This is because less than 3% are caused by it.
In certain situations, organ donation can be possible following cardiac death. This is mainly when the patient is seriously brain-injured and cannot survive without artificial breathing or mechanical support.
A person’s next of kin can decide to stop receiving artificial support, regardless of whether they have planned to donate. If the person is likely to die within a very short time, it is possible to arrange for the withdrawal of support in an operating room. This will allow the organs to be quickly recovered after death.
Donors who have died from the brain or circulatory failure may be able to recover tissues. Tissues can be taken from donors within 24 hours of the end of a heartbeat. Unlike organs, most tissues, except corneas, can be stored and preserved for up to five years. A single donor can provide more than 60 grafts.
Tissue transplants are more common than organ transplants because of these three factors: the ability to receive tissue from a donor who is not heart-beat-beating, the ability of the tissue to be banked, and the availability of grafts from each donor. According to the American Association of Tissue Banks, more than one million tissue transfers take place each year in the United States.
Donor living
Living donors are those who remain alive and donate a tissue, cell, or fluid to another person (e.g., blood, skin) or organs or parts of organs that can be regenerated or take over the work of the other organs (e.g., single kidney donation, partial liver donation, lung lobe donation, small bowel donation). One day, regenerative medicine will allow laboratory-grown organs to be made using the donor’s cells or from healthy cells taken from the affected organs.
The donor who has died
People who are deceased donors, also known as cadaveric, are those who have been declared brain-dead. Their organs are kept alive by ventilators and other mechanical devices until they are ready for transplantation.
As the need for transplants continues to rise, there is a growing use of after-circulatory-death donors (formerly non-heart-beating donors) in addition to brainstem-dead donors, who have made up the bulk of deceased donors over the past 20 years. Before the legal recognition in the 1980s of brain death, all organ donors died from circulatory death. These organs are less likely to be transplanted from a brain-dead donor.
For instance, due to biliary complications and primary nonfunction in liver transplantation, it has been demonstrated that patients who underwent liver transplantation using donation-after-circulatory-death allografts had significantly lower graft survival than those from donation-after-brain-death allografts.
But, considering the shortage of organs available and the high number of people who are dying waiting, it is important to consider any organ that might be suitable. Organ donations may be coordinated by jurisdictions that have medically assisted suicide.
