What is Organ Transplantation?

Organ transplantation means transplanting one organ from a living or dead person to another needy patient who suffers from end-stage disease affecting that particular organ. This means transplanting kidneys to those with chronic kidney failure, liver to those with liver failure, heart to those who need it and so on. Transplantation is the only hope for these helpless patients to have a new life with good quality.

Basically we can divide transplantation into two types depending on from whom the organs are harvested:

Living donor: where a patient receives an organ form his/her nearest relation or from any healthy voluntary donor with the permission of the zonal authorization committee.
 
Cadaver donor: wherein patients receive organs from a brain-dead person. 

Kidneys are being transplanted form a living relative without affecting the donor’s health (especially nowadays with keyhole surgery for organ donors) since they are paired organs. Similarly, a portion of the liver could be transplanted from a living person to another patient and this also being very successfully done. This could be from mother/father to child or from an adult person to another adult. A cornea (eye donation) can be made even during the first 3 hours after death.

Why do we need to take organ from dead person?

An individual may donate one kidney and lead a normal life with his/her remaining normal kidney. In that case you may say that patients with kidney failure are lucky as they have more options to get a donor. In some situations, one can donate a portion of liver or lung or pancreas to save life of another. A small degree of risk to the donor does exist. For organs like heart it is needless to say living person cannot donate. So, to save thousands of unfortunate patients who wait for liver, heart, pancreas and lung transplant, donation from a brain-dead is the ray of hope to a future life that needs to be encouraged.

How “Brain Dead” is different from death?

It was in 1968, scientists from Harvard had noticed that some patients who had severe head injury or cerebral bleed never regained consciousness. They remained unconscious and when the life-support measures like ventilator were taken off they died. So a new definition of death was put forward. “Brain death” is equivalent to death. The Indian Government has also accepted brain death as a form of death. In a controlled environment (like Intensive Care Unit), once brain death is established, it is possible to harvest different organs from these patients, which can give new life to 5-7 patients from a single donor.

How “Coma” is different from “Brain Death”?

Coma is also a state of unconsciousness and depending on the severity they may recover. However, “brain death” is a state of very deep coma with no reflexes, absent respiratory drive and life only sustained by artificial devices. Patients with brain death never recover. Brain death can be truly confirmed by a series of tests by experts like Neurologists or neurosurgeons. The standards are very strict and are accepted medically and ethically all over the world.

Organ procurement from a ‘brain dead’ person is legally valid

The Government of India has passed this law in 1994 (the Transplantation of Human Organs Act) to broaden the concept of organ donation and meet the shortage of donor organs. The Act identified ‘brain death’ as death to be approved by an independent team of experts based on stringent tests, before organ donation. It empowers one of the nearest relatives – father/mother, son/daughter, brother/sister, husband/wife – to give consent for organ donation once brain death is confirmed.

Why Major Obstacle Today?

The major obstacle to Organ Transplantation is the shortage of donated organs and lack of facilities or expertise. This scenario is rapidly changing in our country now. More and more hospitals have facilities to perform transplantation today. With improvement in technology and with use of organ-preserving solution one can procure organ from one hospital and use it for a patient in another hospital at a distant place.

Details of Organ Transplantation

Two hundred & thirty three cases of organ transplantation were done in Lakeshore Hopsital till date.Among these,222 were renal transplants and 11 were liver transplants.Of the 222 renal transplants done,in 105 cases,first degree relatives of the recipients were the donors.In 114 cases,near relatives,emotionally related individuals or friends were the donors and renal transplantation was done after getting the clearance from zonal Authorisation Committee for Oragan Transplantation.Three patients underwent cadaver renal transplantation.Of the 11 liver transplants done,one was a cadaver transplantation and in all other cases,first degree relatives of the recipients were the donars.