Organ donation is the process when a person allows an organ of their own to be removed and transplanted to another person, legally, either by consent while the donor is alive or dead with the assent of the next of kin.
Organ transplantation is a medical procedure in which an organ is removed from one body and placed in the body of a recipient, to replace a damaged or missing organ. The donor and recipient may be at the same location, or organs may be transported from a donor site to another location. Organs and/or tissues that are transplanted within the same person's body are called autografts. Transplants that are recently performed between two subjects of the same species are called allografts. Allografts can either be from a living or cadaveric source.
Liver transplantation or hepatic transplantation is the replacement of a diseased liver with the healthy liver from another person (allograft). Liver transplantation is a treatment option for end-stage liver disease and acute liver failure, although availability of donor organs is a major limitation. The most common technique is orthotopic transplantation, in which the native liver is removed and replaced by the donor organ in the same anatomic position as the original liver. The surgical procedure is complex, requiring careful harvest of the donor organ and meticulous implantation into the recipient. Liver transplantation is highly regulated, and only performed at designated transplant medical centers by highly trained transplant physicians and supporting medical team. The duration of the surgery ranges from 4 to 18 hours depending on outcome. Favorable outcomes require careful screening for eligible recipient, as well as a well-calibrated live or cadaveric donor match.
Joseph Edward Murray was an American plastic surgeon who performed the first successful human kidney transplant on identical twins Richard and Ronald Herrick on December 23, 1954.
Kidney transplant or renal transplant is the organ transplant of a kidney into a patient with end-stage kidney disease (ESRD). Kidney transplant is typically classified as deceased-donor or living-donor transplantation depending on the source of the donor organ. Living-donor kidney transplants are further characterized as genetically related (living-related) or non-related (living-unrelated) transplants, depending on whether a biological relationship exists between the donor and recipient.
A nephrectomy is the surgical removal of a kidney, performed to treat a number of kidney diseases including kidney cancer. It is also done to remove a normal healthy kidney from a living or deceased donor, which is part of a kidney transplant procedure.
Thomas Earl Starzl was an American physician, researcher, and expert on organ transplants. He performed the first human liver transplants, and has often been referred to as "the father of modern transplantation." A documentary, entitled "Burden of Genius," covering the medical and scientific advances spearheaded by Starzl himself, was released to the public in 2017 in a series of screenings. Dr. Starzl also penned his autobiography, "The Puzzle People: Memoirs Of A Transplant Surgeon," which was published in 1992.
The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) is a non-profit, scientific and educational organization that administers the only Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) in the United States, established by the U.S. Congress in 1984 by Gene A. Pierce, founder of United Network for Organ Sharing. Located in Richmond, Virginia, the organization's headquarters are situated near the intersection of Interstate 95 and Interstate 64 in the Virginia BioTechnology Research Park.
Organ procurement is a surgical procedure that removes organs or tissues for reuse, typically for organ transplantation.
Jean C. Emond is the current Thomas S. Zimmer Professor of Surgery at the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. He is also a Vice Chair in the Department of Surgery and the Chief of Transplantation at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Emond completed both his undergraduate ('75) and medical training ('79) at the University of Chicago.
Organ trade is the trading of human organs, tissues, or other body products, usually for transplantation. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), organ trade is a commercial transplantation where there is a profit, or transplantations that occur outside of national medical systems. There is a global need or demand for healthy body parts for transplantation, which exceeds the numbers available.
Surgical Outcomes Analysis & Research, SOAR, is a research laboratory of the Department of Surgery at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center with expertise in outcomes research. SOAR investigates surgical diseases and perioperative outcomes. The group focuses on pancreatic cancer, other gastrointestinal and hepatobiliary malignancies, vascular disease, and transplant surgery. SOAR's goal is to examine quality, delivery, and financing of care in order to have an immediate impact on patient care and system improvements. The group members utilize national health services and administrative databases, as well as institutional databases, to investigate and to address factors contributing to disease outcomes and healthcare disparities.
ABO-incompatible (ABOi) transplantation is a method of allocation in organ transplantation that permits more efficient use of available organs regardless of ABO blood type, which would otherwise be unavailable due to hyperacute rejection. Primarily in use in infants and young toddlers, research is ongoing to allow for increased use of this capability in adult transplants. Normal ABO-compatibility rules may be observed for all recipients. This means that anyone may receive a transplant of a type-O organ, and consequently, type-O recipients are one of the biggest beneficiaries of ABO-incompatible transplants. While focus has been on infant heart transplants, the principles generally apply to other forms of solid organ transplantation.
Sunil Shroff is the managing trustee of a non-government and non-profit organisation called MOHAN Foundation and is well known for his work in the field of deceased donation transplantation in India. He has worked towards improving the deceased organ donation rate in India.
Kidney paired donation (KPD), or paired exchange, is an approach to living donor kidney transplantation where patients with incompatible donors swap kidneys to receive a compatible kidney. KPD is used in situations where a potential donor is incompatible. Because better donor HLA and age matching are correlated with lower lifetime mortality and longer lasting kidney transplants, many compatible pairs are also participating in swaps to find better matched kidneys. In the United States, the National Kidney Registry organizes the majority of U.S. KPD transplants, including the largest swaps. The first large swap was a 60 participant chain in 2012 that appeared on the front page of the New York Times and the second, even larger swap, included 70 participants and was completed in 2014. Other KPD programs in the U.S. include the UNOS program, which was launched in 2010 and completed its 100th KPD transplant in 2014, and the Alliance for Paired Donation.
Dorry L. Segev is the Israeli-born Marjory K. and Thomas Pozefsky Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and associate vice chair of the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He has made significant contributions to the field of transplantation, including developing a mathematical model to facilitate a nationwide kidney paired donation program, both in the US and Canada. He is also known for his role in getting the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act signed into law.
The British Transplantation Society (BTS) is a non-profit professional body representing the community of physicians, surgeons, nurses, allied health professionals and scientists involved in organ transplantation in the United Kingdom. The BTS supports the provision and dissemination of medical research in organ transplantation, and also develops national guidance and policy in the provision of transplant care to patients, including living donation. Notably the society supported the debate for presumed consent from deceased donors in United Kingdom parliament and also the use of donation after circulatory failure (DCD) in the expansion of the donor pool.
James Michael Millis is an American academic and surgeon specializing in pediatric and adult liver transplantation. He is Professor of Surgery and Vice Chair of Global Surgery at University of Chicago. He is also the director of Clinical Leadership Development Fellowship and Hepatobiliary Surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center. He is known for developing new techniques of liver surgery that improved outcomes following liver transplantation and non transplant liver and biliary tract surgery.
Clive O. Callender is an American surgeon and professor of surgery at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C. Trained in organ transplantation, he founded the Howard University Hospital Transplant Center in 1974. To increase the frequency of organ donation among African Americans he founded the National Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program (MOTTEP) in 1991. During the 2019/20 academic year he continued his academic work as Professor of Surgery at Howard University College of Medicine.
Nancy L. Ascher is an American surgeon, and the first woman to perform a liver transplant. Ascher specializes in transplant surgery, focusing on end-stage kidney disease, kidney transplantation, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and liver transplantation.
