Organ donation, also known as organ transplant is an operation that involves moving organs from an organism, a donor to another organism, a recipient. Organ donation in the United States has helped improve the health of many lives in the last fifty years since its implementation. An organ transplante is required in case one organ fails as a result of an injury or illness. The donor can either be a living person, or a person who died recently. The recently dead donors must have agreed to donate their organs before dying through registration.
Based on the health department in the United States, for every one tissue or organ donor, more than fifty lives are improved thus saving more lives. Moreover, the family of the deceased feel better knowing that goodness resulted from the tragedy, especially if the recipient was a young and deserving person. As a result, the families of the deceased console themselves that a part of their loved one continues living. The advantage of donating organs while still alive is that donors continue living healthy lives as before. This paper will proceed to explore the causes and effects of human organ donation.
Causes of Human Organ Donation
Most people require an organ transplant by reason of certain genetic conditions like heart defect, polycystic kidney disease and cystic fibrosis. Additionally, infections like hepatitis, damage as a result of chronic diseases, and physical injuries on certain organs might also cause a person to require a transplant. Twenty people on average in the United States die as they wait for an organ transplant every day (Park et al., 2022). Receiving an organ leads to an improvement in quality of life. For example, by curbing the possibility of dialysis or restoring sight with a transplant of cornea. Since individuals needing transplants often suffer from critical diseases, they might get very sick before the transplant. Transplantation begins by a doctor putting a candidate on the list of organ transplants. The position in the list is based on several components such as the severity of the sickness. This process also necessitates a doctor to check the person, identify a critical medical state, and conclude that they are convenient candidates for an organ transplant. However, organ transplant is a very obscure process since it necessitates that there is a close similarity between the donor and recipient. For instance, the recipient of the organ must have a blood type that matches with that of the donor. Other factors may also be relevant depending on the organ involved. For example, individuals receiving a kidney as well as their donors must have compatible antibodies same body sizes.
When an individual reaches at the top of the organ waiting list, he or she receives an organ transplant immediately a match donor is available. Once the organ is available, the organ receiver is required to respond as quickly as possible to the call from their doctor. Many people believe that once a donor registers for donation but dies before the transplant, the recipient has to get another donor. However, this is not the case as Donate Life has an obligation to ask the next of kin to support the decision of the deceased to donate (Thomann, 2018). The importance of registration is that it makes it easier for the next of kin, knowing that the deceased had already decided on donation.
Thereafter, surgery is done within a short while after this call since organs cannot pull through for long after removal from the body. Following the transplantation process, the recipient is required to remain hospitalized for at least a few days for close monitoring from doctors. The duration of hospital stay depends on certain factors such as, the successfulness of the surgery, and the general health of the recipient. Some of these organ recipients often get sick, and in some cases become severely sick. It is therefore important for the recipients to seek medical attention in case of any infection signs that mostly include fever. Additionally, recipients are provided with anti-rejection medicines and other varieties of medications to aid in their long term well-being. These medications are important in preventing rejection of organs by strenthening the immune system of the recipient. Generally, genetic defects, infections, damage and injuries to human organs are the common causes of human organ donation.
Effects of Human Organ Donation
Effects of organ donation can either be positive or negative. Positive effects to a recipient include improvement in the quality of life, increased lifespan, better results, shorter waiting time. For kidney and liver patients, organs functions immediately after transplantation. Under quality of life, organ transplant improves the life quality of the organ transplant candidates by permitting them to return to their usual activities. Therefore, they get to spend more time with their families, and also go after their dreams more fully. In addition, kidney transplantation greatly improves the life span of the recipient by approximately ten years. People who undergo kidney transplants do not go through a regular dialysis or experience the complexities of kidney dialysis which include, vomiting, itchy skin, low blood pressure and nausea.
Considering a reduced waiting time effect, owing to the limited number of organs accessible for transplant, candidates on the national waiting transplant list undergo long waits. These waits which occasionally sum up to years before they get an organ from a deceased donor. However, organ candidates who get a living donor are immediately removed from the list. The advantage of having a living donor is that they removes the patient from the waiting list thus giving other patients who cannot easily get a donor a better opportunity of receiving one.
Studies prove that recipients achieve better results in general when their organs come from living donors as opposed to those that wait for deceased donors (Raza et al., 2020). This assertion is because living donors experience higher longevity compared to deceased donors. In order to maximize the possibility of better results after the transplant, both the living donor and recipient must have genetic matches. Moreover, a liver or kidney that comes from a living person functions immediately after a successful transplantation. In some cases, though uncommon, kidneys transplanted from deceased donors do not function instantly leaving the patient to need dialysis before the new kidney begins to function.
Effects on the doctor performing the organ transplant are mostly mostly positive. One such effect is a positive emotional experience, that is the experience of giving the gift of an organ to a person in need. Secondly, the doctor gets more time to spend with a loved one if the recipient is his or her relative. For both the living donor and recipient, organ donation provides them with a flexible time frame, since the surgery is scheduled at a convenient time for both recipient and donor. A transplant impact is usually so conspicuous since most recipients appear healthier once they leave the emergency room.
Human organ donation has no effect on the life expectancy of the donor. Even after recovering from surgery, most donors continue living active, and healthy lives. Kidney donors take a usual recovery time of between two to six weeks before resuming to their normal working lives. However, for liver donors, they require a two-months rest at minimum to resumetheir activities (Dunn et al., 2020). It is however not always the case that the donor remains healthy after surgery. In some cases, the kidney that remains may slightly enlarge since it does the work shared by two kidneys. However, liver transplant is different from kidney as it is able to regain, and regenerate full performance. Contrastively, for pancreas and lungs donors, these organs neither regenerate nor regain. Nevertheles, these pacreas and lung donors rarely experience issues with a reduction in function.
Other risks to a living donor include pain, allergic reactions, blood clots, pneumonia, anaesthesia reactions and injury to adjacent organs during surgery. However, since transplant surgeries are becoming more common in present years, more advanced surgical techniques are used thus minimizing the risks associated with living donation. Effects of organ transplant are different depending on the type of organ, and the health of the donor. For people donating kidneys, there exists only a one percent of risk increase to the donor. Examples of long-term possible risks of kidney donation include hypertension (high blood pressure), hernia and excess concentration on proteins in urine. Compared to kidney donors, liver donors have greater possible long-term risks.
These risks include abdominal bleeding, bile duct narrowing and leakage of bile. It is often thought that kidney and liver transplants do not affect the possibility of the donor to get pregnant. However, this assertion is false as certain researches prove that a significant number of women involved in kidney, or part of a liver donation undergo pre-eclampsia or gestational hypertension during pregnancy (Gong et al., 2021). Many people are afraid to donate organs due to the belief that the out-of-pocket expenses are very high for the procedure.
However, the insurance policy of the recipient covers the transplant as well as the transplant-related follow-up. Additionally, the American Transplant Foundation (ATF) in the US provides financial aid to donors in need of lost wages (Elias et al., 2019). Lastly, another effect of organ transplant is that it might limit the donor from pursing certain careers. An example of these professions are military branches, some fire and police departments that do not employ people with only one kidney. It is therefore important for donors to speak with their superiors in case they consider becoming living donors.
In conclusion, donation of organs involves a collaborative, and complex set of interactions among family members, patients the hospital, and the organ procurement organisation. The organ procurement organisation assists in facilitating the distribution, and acquisition of organs. Since the first successful organ transport fifty years ago, thousands of kidney, liver, pancreas heart and other organs in the United States report of improved health, and life extension courtesy of organ transplantation. Additionally, the number of organs increase annually whereby more than 1100 more organs are received than the previous year (Pathak et al., 2019). However, the organ transplant waiting list continues to increase every year by approximately 5000 candidates for transplant.
As organ donation demand surpasses the currently accessible organs, various attempts are ongoing to find out the best way to bridge the organ demand and supply gap. Adding to refinements in hospital protocols, the US government is implementing various proposals that might result to system enhancement, or provision of incentives so that more families or individuals can consent to donation of organs. Lastly, the organ donation system in the US is formed by a series of state and federal regulations, individual hospital policies and private-sector supervision. This system primarily focuses on deceased organ donors whose deaths are governed by neurologic measures.
References
Dunn, M. A., Rogal, S. S., Duarte‐Rojo, A., & Lai, J. C. (2020). Physical function, physical activity, and quality of life after liver transplantation. Liver Transplantation, 26(5), 702-708. Web.
Elías, J. J., Lacetera, N., & Macis, M. (2019). Paying for kidneys? A randomized survey and choice experiment. American Economic Review, 109(8), 2855-2888. Web.
Gong, X., Li, J., Yan, J., Dai, R., Liu, L., Chen, P., & Chen, X. (2021). Pregnancy outcomes in female patients exposed to cyclosporin‐based versus tacrolimus‐based immunosuppressive regimens after liver/kidney transplantation: A systematic review and meta‐analysis. Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 46(3), 744-753. Web.
Park, C., Jones, M., Kaplan, S., Koller, F. L., Wilder, J. M., Boulware, L. E., & McElroy, L. M. (2022). A scoping review of inequities in access to organ transplant in the United States. International Journal for Equity in Health, 21(1). Web.
Pathak, V., Madhavan, D., Narayanasamy, K., Kumar, S., Ramalingam, V., Sengodagounder, B., & Bodonyi-Kovacs, G. (2019). Low-dose Rituximab and Thymoglobulin induction with steroid-free maintenance immunosuppression and protocol biopsies improves long-term patient and Graft survival after kidney transplantation: Survival and safety outcomes in more than 1100 patients from a single center. Transplantation Direct, 5(8), e475. Web.
Raza, M. H., Aziz, H., Kaur, N., Lo, M., Sher, L., Genyk, Y., & Emamaullee, J. (2020). Global experience and perspective on Anonymous nondirected live donation in living donor liver transplantation. Clinical Transplantation, 34(4). Web.
Thomann, E. (2018). “Donate your organs, donate life!” explicitness in policy instruments. Policy Sciences, 51(4), 433-456. Web.