Global number of organ transplantations 2021 The kidney is the most transplanted organ worldwide followed by the liver and the heart. In 2021, there were a total of around 144,302 organ transplants worldwide.
The kidney is the most commonly transplanted organ.
In the United States, the most commonly transplanted organs are the kidney, liver, heart, lungs, pancreas and intestines.
Intestine. Small intestine transplantation is the rarest type of solid organ transplant. Currently, approximately half are pediatric recipients.
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.
“Where extracorporeal machines or transplantation can support or replace the function of organs such as the heart, lung, liver or kidney, the brain is the only organ that cannot be supported or replaced by medical technology.”
Kidney transplants are the most common type of transplant surgery; the least common single-organ transplants are the intestines.
In most experimental transplant models, kidney and liver allografts evoke a weaker rejection response than heart and lung allografts. Moreover, kidney and liver allografts can actively participate in the induction and maintenance of tolerance and thus, can be considered “tolerance-prone” organs.
A World War II veteran who passed away recently has proven that it's possible to keep helping others by giving the gift of life and becoming the oldest recorded organ donor in United States history. Cecil F. Lockhart of Welch was 95 years old when he passed away May 4 after a short illness.
The biggest-ticket organ you can legally sell in the U.S. is your heart: They're going for a cool $1 million. Livers come in second, worth about $557,000 and kidneys fetch about $262,000 each. Widespread diabetes and heart disease is what have made these particular organs so expensive.
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.
Kidneys: Kidneys are the most needed and most commonly transplanted organ. Kidneys are responsible for filtering waste and excess water from the blood and balancing the body's fluids.
Kidney transplantation surgery is relatively noninvasive with the organ being placed on the inguinal fossa without the need to breech the peritoneal cavity. If all goes smoothly, the kidney recipient can expect to be discharged from the hospital in excellent condition after five days.
According to contemporary thinking, a full brain transfer from one living individual (Body Recipient, R) to another (Body Donor, D), a.k.a. cerebrosomatic anastomosis, is unachievable. Possible immune rejection if BT is carried out on a heterologous body rather than R's clone.
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.
Technically, you can't donate an entire lung. Some transplant centers do "living donor" lung transplants, where the lower lobes of a lung (your right lung has three lobes, and the left lung has two) from two donors are transplanted.
A 17-year-old girl from Kerala has donated a part of her liver to her father, becoming the youngest organ donor in the country. Devananda, a Class 12 student, had approached the Kerala High Court seeking an exemption as the law in the country does not allow minors to donate organs.
TRANSPLANTED ORGANS CAN BE DONATED AGAIN
Recently, Doctor Jeffrey Veale, director of the UCLA Kidney Exchange Program made news for successfully transplanting a healthy kidney into a second patient. He did this after the first recipient's tragic death in an auto accident.
Livers from female donors yielded significantly poorer results, with 2-year graft survival of female to male 55% (95% CI, 45% to 67%); female to female, 64% (95% CI, 54% to 77%); male to male, 72% (95% CI, 66% to 78%); and male to female, 78% (95% CI, 70% to 88%).
At 5 years post-transplant, 80% of lung transplants, 60% of heart transplants and 50% of kidney transplants are affected, while liver transplants are only affected 10% of the time.
Even though medicines are used to suppress the immune system, organ transplants can still fail because of rejection. Single episodes of acute rejection rarely lead to organ failure. Chronic rejection is the leading cause of organ transplant failure. The organ slowly loses its function and symptoms start to appear.
In heart transplants, the rate of organ rejection and patient mortality are the highest, even though the transplants are monitored by regular biopsies. Specifically, some 40% of heart recipients experience some type of severe rejection within one year of their transplant.
Organ Preservation
Hearts and lungs must be transplanted within approximately four hours after being removed from the donor. Livers can be preserved between 12 - 18 hours; a pancreas can be preserved 8 - 12 hours; intestines can be preserved approximately 8 hours; kidneys can be preserved 24 - 48 hours.
Although mortality has traditionally been estimated at 1 in 250 for living donation, a more recent survey found a 1 in 1,000 chance of death among liver donors at experienced centers, and a morbidity rate of approximately 30%.