Organ Transplantation

Introduction

Organ transplantation is the moving of an organ from one body to another or from a donor site to another location on the patient's own body, for the purpose of replacing the recipient's damaged or absent organ.

Domino Transplants

In patients with cystic fibrosis, where both lungs need to be replaced, it is a technically easier operation with a higher rate of success to replace both the heart and lungs of the recipient with those of the donor. As the recipient's original heart is usually healthy, it can then be transplanted into a second recipient in need of a heart transplant.

Split Transplants

Sometimes a deceased-donor organ, usually a liver, may be divided between two recipients, especially an adult and a child. This is not usually a preferred option because the transplantation of a whole organ is more successful.

Types of donor

Living donor: In "living donors", the donor

remains alive and donates a renewable tissue, cell, or fluid, or donates an organ or part of an organ in which the remaining organ can regenerate or take on the workload of the rest of the organ. Regenerative medicine may one day allow for laboratory-grown organs, using patient's own cells via stem cells, or healthy cells extracted from the failing organs.

Deceased Donor Deceased donors who have been

declared brain-dead and whose organs are kept viable by ventilators or other mechanical mechanisms until they can be excised for transplantation. Apart from brain-stem dead donors, who have formed the majority of deceased donors for the last twenty years, there is increasing use of Donation after Cardiac Death Donors to increase the potential pool of donors as demand for transplants continues to grow.