An organ transplant is a transplantation of an organ into a foreign organism. This complicated procedure takes place when the patient’s own organs fail due to a disease or accident. The greatest risk after transplantation is possible rejection of the foreign tissue, which may require the graft to be removed.
What is organ transplantation?
An organ transplant is a transplantation of an organ into a foreign organism. This complicated procedure takes place when the patient’s own organs fail due to disease or accident. By organ transplantation, physicians mean the surgical transplantation of a healthy organ into an organism in which the respective organ is incurably diseased or irreparably damaged by an injury. Kidneys, livers, lungs and hearts are transplanted particularly frequently because the patient’s life is acutely endangered if one of these vital organs fails. In order to receive an organ transplant, certain requirements must be met. In addition, compatibility of the respective donor is required so that the organ is not rejected immediately after the procedure and has to be removed again. For this reason, if possible, relatives of the patient are willingly used as donors. Otherwise, donor organs are often taken from compatible deceased persons from whom or from whose relatives an appropriate declaration of consent has been obtained.
Function, effect, and goals
Organ transplantation is considered when a patient has an irreparable disease or an equal injury to a vital organ. If the patient’s life is correspondingly endangered and there is no prospect of recovery or cure, the person in question is placed on a waiting list for a donor organ. The more hopeless and time-critical the patient’s situation, the higher he or she is placed on the waiting list. Under certain circumstances, a so-called living donation is possible. This is the case when organs or parts of organs are involved that the donor can deliver alive without suffering major damage to his or her health. Kidneys or parts of the liver, for example, are often donated in this way. Other organs, such as the heart, that cannot be removed from a living person are donated by the recently deceased. These have agreed in advance, via an organ donor card or other declaration of consent, that organs may be used after their death, provided they are suitable for a patient in need. If all requirements are met and donor and recipient are compatible (this is determined by blood and tissue tests), the organ is removed from the deceased and transplanted into the patient’s body as soon as possible. After the operation has been performed, strict care must be taken to ensure that the organism accepts the foreign organ and accepts it as its own. During this critical phase, constant medical monitoring is necessary. The goal of organ transplantation is to restore the patient’s health so that he or she can lead a largely normal life. Among the organs that can be transplanted today are parts of the small intestine or pancreas, in addition to the common kidneys, livers and hearts. Tissue can also be transplanted, such as bone marrow cells or the cornea of the eye.
Risks and dangers
The biggest risk with organ transplantation is possible rejection of the foreign organ. Basically, the body reacts every time to the transplantation of an organ that is foreign to it. The reason for this is the different surface structure of the tissue cells, which are perceived by the organism as foreign bodies. As a consequence, it tries to reject the organ it does not know. In the worst case, these natural reactions can lead to the death of the donor organ, so that it ceases to function and eventually has to be removed. This process can occur acutely immediately after the operation or chronically in the further course. To prevent this, the patient is administered drugs that are supposed to inhibit the rejection reaction. At the same time, however, these also weaken the immune system, which causes an increased susceptibility to infections. The patient must be closely monitored during this time in order to be able to detect any reactions as quickly as possible.The severity of rejection reactions depends on the individual organism. In general, the risk of rejection is statistically higher for lung, liver, and heart transplants than for other organs and tissues.
