Medical urgency and location are also factors but less so than other organs as they kidney can remain viable outside the body for 24-36 hours under the proper conditions.
How long transplants last: when combined with a kidney transplant, about an 11-year graft half-life. Longest on record at Ohio State: pancreas alone, 24 years; pancreas and kidney, 32 years.
The brain and nerve cells require a constant supply of oxygen and will die within a few minutes, once you stop breathing. The next to go will be the heart, followed by the liver, then the kidneys and pancreas, which can last for about an hour. Skin, tendons, heart valves and corneas will still be alive after a day.
"The kidneys, on the other hand, are very resilient." Harvested kidneys can remain viable for 24 to 36 hours in cold storage, longer than any of the other top-four transplant organs.
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.
“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.”
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.
Tissues such as cornea, heart valves, skin, and bone can be donated in case of natural death but vital organs such as heart, liver, kidneys, intestines, lungs, and pancreas can be donated only in the case of 'brain death'.
Brain death is permanent and irreversible. It is a legal definition of death. However, the vital organs such as the heart, lungs, liver, pancreas and kidneys can be kept viable for a few days if supported by artificial or mechanical support.
This usually begins in the liver, which is rich in enzymes, and in the brain, which has high water content. Eventually, though, all other tissues and organs begin to break down in this way.
What happens when someone dies? In time, the heart stops and they stop breathing. Within a few minutes, their brain stops functioning entirely and their skin starts to cool. At this point, they have died.
Hearts can be kept alive for 24 hours after death, scientists have shown in a breakthrough which could help solve the organ donation crisis. Currently, hearts must be transplanted within a critical four-hour window, after which too much damage has occurred for the organ to be useful.
These results provide insight into the observation that the uterus and prostate are the last internal organs to decay during human decomposition.
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.
Acute rejection may occur any time from the first week after the transplant to 3 months afterward. All recipients have some amount of acute rejection. Chronic rejection can take place over many years. The body's constant immune response against the new organ slowly damages the transplanted tissues or organ.
Brain Dead people can donate their organs. Brain death is diagnosed as per the criteria of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The test is done twice in a time gap of minimum 6 hours by the panel of 4 doctors out of that 2 of them are approved by the Appropriate Authority for Human Organ Transplant.
According to the widely used, although somewhat hard-to-find-credit-for figures, a heart is worth around $1 million in the US. Livers come in second, worth about $557,000 and kidneys cost about $262,000 each. Not to speak about human skin ($10/inch), stomach ($500), and eyeballs ($1,500 each).
Jehovah's Witnesses – According to the Watch Tower Society, the legal corporation for the religion, Jehovah's Witnesses do not encourage organ donation but believe it is a matter best left to an individual's conscience. All organs and tissues, however, must be completely drained of blood before transplantation.
Removing the old kidneys is very risky and should not be done unless there is uncontrolled infection, high blood pressure, or the kidneys are markedly enlarged such as with polycystic kidney disease (PKD). It is uncommon for us to recommend removal of native kidneys prior to kidney transplant.
There are three major types of allograft rejection: Hyperacute, acute, and chronic rejection.