What happens if i donate my organs

Fact: While that used to be the case, it isn't any longer. Whether it's a distant family member, friend or complete stranger you want to help, you can donate a kidney through certain transplant centers. If you decide to become a living donor, you will undergo extensive questioning to ensure that you are aware of the risks and that your decision to donate isn't based on financial gain.

You will also undergo testing to determine if your kidneys are in good shape and whether you can live a healthy life with just one kidney. Myth: Rich and famous people go to the top of the list when they need a donor organ. Fact: The rich and famous aren't given priority when it comes to allocating organs.

It may seem that way because of the amount of publicity generated when a celebrity receives a transplant, but they are treated no differently from anyone else.

The reality is that celebrity and financial status are not considered in organ allocation. Fact: The organ donor's family is never charged for donation. The family is charged for the costs of all final efforts to save your life, and those costs are sometimes misinterpreted as costs related to organ donation. Costs for organ removal go to the transplant recipient.

Now that you have the facts, you can see that being an organ donor can make a big difference, and not just to one person. By donating your organs and tissue after you die, you can save or improve as many as 75 lives. Many families say that knowing their loved one helped save or improve other lives helped them cope with their loss. It's especially important to consider becoming an organ donor if you belong to an ethnic minority.

Minorities including African Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and Hispanics are more likely than whites to have certain chronic conditions that affect the kidneys, heart, lung, pancreas and liver. Certain blood types are more prevalent in ethnic minority populations.

Because matching blood type is usually necessary for transplants, the need for minority donor organs is especially high. Becoming an organ donor is easy. You can indicate that you want to be a donor in the following ways:. The best way to ensure that your wishes are carried out is to register with your state's organ donation registry and include donor designation on your driver's license or state ID. Taking these steps legally authorizes your organ donation upon death.

If you have designated someone to make health care decisions for you if you become unable to do so, make sure that person knows that you want to be an organ donor. You may also include your wishes in your living will if you have one, but that might not be immediately available at the time of your death. It's also very important to tell your family that you want to be a donor. Hospitals seek consent from the next of kin before removing organs, although this is not required if you're registered with your state's donor registry or have donor designation on your driver's license or state ID card.

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Error Email field is required. The OPO may ask your closest blood relative next of kin for approval. Once they have approval, they do a medical evaluation. This is your complete medical and social history. They get this from your family. The OPTN is a national database. It has all patients in the U. The OPO enters information about a donor into the system and the search begins. The system creates a list of patients who match the donor by organ. The system offers each available organ to the transplant team of the best-matched patient.

The transplant surgeon makes the final decision. They decide whether the organ is good for their patient. Most organs go to patients in the area where doctors recovered the organs. Other organs may go to patients in other parts of the country. Have a medical condition?

Are you a smoker, or are you unable to give blood? You may still be able to become an organ donor. Get the facts about eligibility here. If - despite their best efforts - death is inevitable, organ and tissue donation will be considered as end of life care discussions start with your loved ones.

Only when end of life care planning is started is the NHS Organ Donor Register accessed by a specialist nurse for organ donation and the possibility of organ donation discussed with your family. There are strict criteria in place in the United Kingdom to help those caring for the dying, by providing safe, timely and consistent criteria for the diagnosis of death. In fact, only around one in people who die in the UK are usually able to be donors.

Donors are typically those who have died in a hospital intensive care unit or emergency department. Death is confirmed by doctors who are entirely independent of the transplant team and this is done in the same way for people who donate organs as for those who do not.

If organ donation is a possibility, o ur specialist nurses will check to see whether an individual is on the NHS Organ Donor Register, and the family of a potential donor will always be consulted. In order for a person to become an organ donor, doctors must first decide if the heart is no longer beating circulatory death or if the brain is no longer working brainstem death; also referred to as death determined by neurological criteria.

Doctors will confirm the death of a patient as either circulatory or brainstem death before donation can take place. Organ donors who go on to donate after death has been confirmed by circulatory criteria will have been treated for some time on an intensive care unit, but their injuries will be such that death is inevitable. Any medical interventions which are prolonging the dying process will be removed.

Only after the heart has stopped beating can donation take place. People who become donors after death has been confirmed by neurological criteria will usually have died in a way that leaves them with a brain injury from which they are not able to recover. They will be unable to regain consciousness and unable to breathe for themselves.

They are typically on a mechanical ventilation machine in hospital. For more information about brainstem death, please visit the NHS website. The organ donation process involves a specialist team who ensure that donors are treated with the greatest care and respect during the removal of organs and tissue for donation. The retrieval of organs takes place in a normal operating theatre under sterile conditions, and is carried out by specialist surgeons. Afterwards the surgical incision is carefully closed and covered by a dressing in the normal way.

Within an opt out system the decision about whether or not you choose to donate your organs is still yours to make. Get information about the choices you can make. Your family will always be involved before donation takes place. For this reason, its really important that you discuss what you want to happen with your family , so your decision is clear and they can have peace of mind knowing that your decision is being honoured. Get information about organ donation law in England.

Get information about organ donation law elsewhere in the UK. You may have seen misleading messages on social media claiming that the deadline for registering your organ donation decision is coming soon. You are free to register or amend your organ donation decision at any time. No one is automatically added to a list. Unless you record your decision on the NHS Organ Donor Register, we will not hold any details about you or your preferences. When you withdraw your details, your organ donation decision - whether to donate or not to donate - is removed along with your personal details.

This will mean that there is no longer any recorded decision for you on the Register. The surgeons fly the organs back to the recipients and begin the transplantation. They must act quickly; the heart and lungs can last 4 to 6 hours outside the body, the pancreas 12 to 24 hours, the liver up to 24 hours and the kidneys 48 to 72 hours, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration HRSA. Meanwhile, the donor's body, with organs removed, is prepared for a funeral or other memorial service.

Organ donation saves lives, but not enough. Each day, 20 people die waiting for a transplant in the U. Even those who have signed up may run into issues with donation if they haven't made their wishes clear to their family.

We never had this conversation,'" Mekesa said. Tara Santora is a contributing editor at Fatherly and a freelance science journalist who covers everything related to science, health and the environment, particularly in relation to marginalized communities. Born and raised in the Philadelphia suburbs, Tara graduated from Oberlin College with a bachelor's degree in biology and New York University with a master's in science journalism. Live Science.