You can still have a fairly normal life without one of your lungs, a kidney, your spleen, appendix, gall bladder, adenoids, tonsils, plus some of your lymph nodes, the fibula bones from each leg and six of your ribs.
Kidneys. Most people have two kidneys, but you can survive with just one – or even none (with the aid of dialysis). The role of the kidneys is to filter the blood to maintain water and electrolyte balance, as well as the acid-base balance.
It turns out that you don't actually need all of your organs to live. Due to a combination of evolution and medical advancements, countless humans have lived and are currently living without several organs that were once thought of as vital.
The human body contains five organs that are considered vital for survival. They are the heart, brain, kidneys, liver, and lungs.
Lungs are the most difficult organ to transplant because they are highly susceptible to infections in the late stages of the donor's life. They can sustain damage during the process of recovering them from the donor or collapse after surgeons begin to ventilate them after transplant.
The Kidneys: 24-36 hours
Medical urgency and location are also factors but less so than other organs, as the kidney can remain viable outside the body for 24-36 hours under the proper conditions.
Transplants can be for: organs – heart, kidney, liver, lung, pancreas, stomach and intestine. tissue – cornea, bone, tendon, skin, pancreas islets, heart valves, nerves and veins.
Your Nose and Ears Are the Only Body Parts That Don't Stop Growing | The Healthy.
Anatomy & Function
The brain is arguably the most important organ in the human body. It controls and coordinates actions and reactions, allows us to think and feel, and enables us to have memories and feelings—all the things that make us human.
You can live without a large intestine - something that comes as a shock to many people. The large intestine or colon has one primary role, water and electrolyte absorption to concentrate the stool. It plays little role in metabolism and people can live full lives without their large intestine.
Types of Organs in a Human Body
Altogether there are seventy-eight main organs within the human body. These organs work in coordination to give rise to several organ systems. Among these 78 organs, five organs are considered vital for survival. These include the heart, brain, kidneys, liver and lungs.
The skin is the body's largest organ.
As the blood pools, patches appear on the skin within 30 minutes of death. About two to four hours postmortem, these patches join up, creating large dark purplish areas towards the bottom of the body and lightening the skin elsewhere. This may be less apparent on darker skin. This process is called livor mortis.
Although death has historically been medically defined as the moment when the heart irreversibly stops beating, recent studies have suggested brain activity in many animals and humans can continue for seconds to hours.
The brain lives on for 30 seconds after death.
Intestine. Small intestine transplantation is the rarest type of solid organ transplant. Currently, approximately half are pediatric recipients.
We must remember that the most delicate organ in the human body is the brain. Brain is one of the largest and most complex organs of the human body and is made up of more than 100 billion nerves. Brain controls speech, thought, memory, movement and helps in the functioning of many organs in the human body.
“Your kidneys are the smartest organs in your body,” says Joseph Vassalotti, MD, chief medical officer of the National Kidney Foundation.
The kidneys perform their life-sustaining job of filtering and returning to the bloodstream about 200 quarts of fluid every 24 hours.
Even today many of the most popular surgeries involve the wholesale removal of body parts—the appendix, gallbladder, tonsils, uterus (usually after the childbearing years)—with an assurance that patients will do just fine without them.
Without dialysis or a kidney transplant, kidney failure is fatal. You may survive a few days or weeks without treatment. If you're on dialysis, the average life expectancy is five to 10 years.