Disparities in Organ Donations and Transplants

Edited by Catherine Verdeflor

The work of a doctor/other medical professional is often varied, complex, and extremely difficult for the average, untrained individual. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of organ donations is the fact that said ordinary folk are given the opportunity to save lives without the time, energy, and money needed to learn the skills and knowledge to become a health professional. An organ donation is simply the voluntary offering of one’s organs to someone in need of a transplant. Practically any organ could be donated to someone whose own body has stopped functioning properly whether it be a lung, kidney, liver, pancreas, intestine, or middle ear. Even a person’s heart or skin can be contributed posthumously if one consents to relinquishing those organs before their death. The option of being an organ donor is often proposed to people at DMVs in which they can answer either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and, when having chosen the former, will receive a red heart on their drivers’ license or permit indicating that at the time of one’s death, the person consented to give any organ that is of dire necessity. While many may not wish to contemplate if they wish to be an organ donor (since the topic does seem rather morbid when you realize you’re basically kind of writing a will for your body’s organs), considering organ donations is a very important topic that a person should take the time to think about. If you do end up choosing to be an organ donor, you’d be donating to a noble cause.

For every one organ donor, up to 10 people can benefit from/receive organ transplants (Better Health, n.d.). This statistic is especially crucial to know when you consider the fact that there is a severe shortage of donors on standby whilst thousands of patients wait tentatively in hopes of a transplant. Many of those patients’ conditions continue to deteriorate and, unfortunately, some people don’t survive long enough to receive a transplant. Another reason donors are invaluable to sick patients is that, often, a patient’s body can reject a person's donated organ simply because the immune system of the patient recognized its [the organ’s] tissue as foreign and attacked it, thus destroying it. If more donors were available for these transplants, however, patients would have more options when it comes to acquiring organs and could more easily get one that works (Better Health Channel, n.d.). Many may think that, regardless of the situation with donor availability, there just aren’t enough organs to go around. Nonetheless, if more people were able and willing to donate their organs, a lot more would be accessible to patients for transplantation.

Even though becoming an organ donor would help to contribute to a wonderful cause and has been, for many recipients, a “second chance” at life, to ignore or disregard potential risks and negative consequences of donating one’s organs would be unwise. Surgical complications that could arise because of donating include but aren't limited to “pain, infection, blood loss, blood clots, allergic reactions to anesthesia, pneumonia, injury to surrounding tissue or other organs, and even death” (American Transplant Foundation, n.d., para. 13). It was also found that women who had previously donated a kidney are at higher risks for gestational hypertension or pre-eclampsia (American Transplant Foundation, n.d.). Furthermore, being a donor has also been known to restrict someone’s access to certain jobs. Because of the possible restrictions, a missing kidney could have on physical exertion, at times fire and police departments as well as branches of the military, may not allow a person with one kidney to serve (American Transplant Foundation, n.d.). At the end of the day, before deciding how you may want to improve someone’s life through the donation of an organ, first consider how relinquishing such a meaningful gift could impact yours.

References:

Benefits and risks of becoming a living organ donor. (n.d.). American Transplant Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.americantransplantfoundation.org/about-transplant/living-donation/about-living-donation/

Organ and tissue transplantation. (n.d.). Better Health Channel. Retrieved from https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/ConditionsAndTreatments/organ-and-tissue-transplantation

[Untitled image of a person holding a "Human Organ For Transplant" container]. Johns Hopkins Medicine. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/disparity-persists-racial-and-ethnic-minority-patients-still-less-likely-than-white-patients-to-get-live-donor-kidney-transplants