8 ms·

The average lifespan of deceased donor kidney is 10 to 15 years and for live donor is around 15 to 20 years. People normally get multiple transplants throughout

by hpagey 5y ago

The average lifespan of deceased donor kidney is 10 to 15 years and for live donor is around 15 to 20 years. People normally get multiple transplants throughout their lives.

jxramos 5y ago
I thought all donors had to be living with a beating heart, are deceased non-heartbeat donors viable for some subset of organ transplants? How does this work exactly?
- short12 5y ago
  Organ donation is based on recently dead people. Heart, liver, kidneys, eyes etc are all up for grabs as soon as possible I learned yesterday that a heart has a shelf life of about 6 hours and liver is 12
  - singlow 5y ago
    I learned today that one can be a living heart donor. There is a special type of donation where a person who needs lungs gets a lungs+heart donation from a deceased donor, while the living person's healthy heart is transplanted to another person whose heart needs to be replaced. It seems this has advantages both for the lung recipient and the heart-only recipient and allows for compatibility in cases where the lungs and heart of the deceased person will not work separately for the two recipients.
  - jxramos 5y ago
    can you share a link, I'd like to learn more about this "organ shelf life". Very fascinating. Maybe I was mistakenly applying the sudden death of the brain without blood perfusion to hold likewise for every other organ. Like a heart attack when blood ceases to flow into it turns the myocardium to scar tissue. But that must not be an instant process, probably takes some time. I know temperature can keep tissues viable longer too, so that's another variable to consider.
    - Someone 5y ago
      The brain doesn’t die suddenly without blood perfusion, either. If it did, heart transplants wouldn’t work at all.
      - rcxdude 5y ago
        For the brain it's pretty damn quick (minutes before significant damage). heart transplants rely on being able to run an artificial heart and lung machine to oxygenate and pump the blood while the heart is stopped, removed, and replaced.
    - jxramos 5y ago
      This article is pretty fascinating, never knew about so called preservation solution https://www.livescience.com/how-long-can-donated-organs-last-before-transplant.html https://www.livescience.com/how-long-can-donated-organs-last...
  - klipt 5y ago
    Fun social engineering fact: countries that make organ donation (on death) opt-out instead of opt-in have much shorter waiting lists for organs. The USA could save thousands of lives by switching to opt-out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_donation#Opt-in_versus_opt-out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_donation#Opt-in_versus_o...
    - njarboe 5y ago
      Funnier social engineering fact: If it's legal for people sell their kidneys, wait lists for kidneys goes to zero[1]. Too bad only one country in the world does that. Another fun fact. The US government spends more on dialysis than the budget for NASA. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_trade_in_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_trade_in_Iran
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        Presumed consent would effectively end waiting lists for most organs.
      - ricardobeat 5y ago
        From news sources I found, it looks like the system in Iran works exactly as one would expect: the poor and desperate end up with one less kidney while not significantly benefitting from the trade. Which is precisely the reason such sales are outlawed worldwide.
        JamesBarney 5y ago
        Kidney donors in Iran get ~6 month salary, kidney donors in the U.S. get 0 months salary. Are Iranian kidney donors the ones getting scammed?
        echelon 5y ago
        Kidneys in the US are largely sourced from cadavers. If we enticed poor people to sell their kidneys, some percentage of them would wind up needing kidneys again without an ability to pay for them. This turns into a kidney marketplace where the rich win out over the poor. FCFS with triage based on need, immunocompatibility, and health outcome is the most equitable model.
  - jdsully 5y ago
    Where I am being on an organ donor list also makes you eligible to be used as a cadaver. I’m not comfortable being prodded by med students but would give an organ.
  - ectopod 5y ago
    Sure, but "dead" is a Humpty Dumpty word. Some organs need the donor to be legally but not colloquially dead. In other words, you are dead and your heart is still beating.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    Considering that some people have been revived without side effects after multiple hours of being brain-dead (e.g. famous example of women who drowned in icy water), how 'dead' is 'dead', in the context of being an organ donor? I've heard it said that "you're not dead until you're warm and dead", but 6-12 hours doesn't seem like a lot of time, to make sure you're not coming back. e.g., I drown in an icy pond, and I'm found after 5 hours. I might be revived, I might not...but the heart only has an hour before it's toast.
    - manquer 5y ago
      Clinical Death != brain dead, Clinical death has a very well defined and nearly irreversible process [1]. The longest human is known to be revived is only in the range 10-15 minutes. Brain damage is quite likely at this point. The longest for an animal is for cat - 1 Hour. Only clinically dead people are eligible for organ transplantation [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death
      - generalizations 5y ago
        That's what I'm concerned about. Clinical death is apparently survivable. > Reduced body temperature, or therapeutic hypothermia, during clinical death slows the rate of injury accumulation, and extends the time period during which clinical death can be survived. The decrease in the rate of injury can be approximated by the Q10 rule, which states that the rate of biochemical reactions decreases by a factor of two for every 10 °C reduction in temperature. As a result, humans can sometimes survive periods of clinical death exceeding one hour at temperatures below 20 °C.[20] The prognosis is improved if clinical death is caused by hypothermia rather than occurring prior to it; in 1999, 29-year-old Swedish woman Anna Bågenholm spent 80 minutes trapped in ice and survived with a near full recovery from a 13.7 °C core body temperature. It is said in emergency medicine that "nobody is dead until they are warm and dead."[21] In animal studies, up to three hours of clinical death can be survived at temperatures near 0 °C.[22][23] I'd rather not be harvested too quickly, when I could have been revived without issue.
        5y ago
- larrik 5y ago
  I'm assuming it's that you can get a kidney transplant from a family member who is lying in the OR next to you. Deceased donors are transported from wherever they died.
- throwaway81523 5y ago
  They collect the organs from people who have just died, such as in car crashes. In the paperwork for getting a California driver license, you check a box saying whether you are willing to be an organ donor. If you check yes and you are later killed in a crash, they immediately bring your remains to a hospital that is always awaiting such deliveries, and a transplant operation gets going right away. Motorcycles are sometimes called "donorcycles" because of the high likelihood that any given crash will be fatal, and that the rider is young and healthy and thus a highly desirable source of transplant material.
  - AmericanChopper 5y ago
    A doctor friend of mine would joke about it being good organ transplant weather when it was raining, because they’d get dead motorcyclists turning up in the rain so frequently.
  - btilly 5y ago
    People needing organ donations are sometimes told to move to Florida. Florida motorcyclists are not generally required to wear helmets. Therefore they more efficiently get to the "donor" stage.
  - Causality1 5y ago
    It's rather astonishing that all the safety regulations for cars manage to exist in the same legal system that allows motorcycles on public roads at all. Last I read the death risk ratio was about 24x.
    - taneq 5y ago
      I’m still amazed by this one. My first thought on riding a 250 was “how is this possibly legal?” And then the jump to a big bore (non-cruiser) is completely insane.
    - _carbyau_ 5y ago
      As a motorcycle rider (every day commuter) I often think that if motorcycles didn't already exist, they wouldn't be allowed to. As per sibling comment, maybe the only reason they are tolerated is that the risk is statistically largely to the rider themselves. IE the person taking the risk is largely the target of the consequences. If motorcycles somehow magically penetrated into peoples cars in a crash I think people would rule them out pretty quick.
- robbiep 5y ago
  Non-heartbeat donors can be for corneal, bone and skin grafts

by hpagey 5y ago

The average lifespan of deceased donor kidney is 10 to 15 years and for live donor is around 15 to 20 years. People normally get multiple transplants throughout their lives.

jxramos 5y ago

I thought all donors had to be living with a beating heart, are deceased non-heartbeat donors viable for some subset of organ transplants? How does this work exactly?

short12 5y ago
Organ donation is based on recently dead people. Heart, liver, kidneys, eyes etc are all up for grabs as soon as possible I learned yesterday that a heart has a shelf life of about 6 hours and liver is 12
- singlow 5y ago
  I learned today that one can be a living heart donor. There is a special type of donation where a person who needs lungs gets a lungs+heart donation from a deceased donor, while the living person's healthy heart is transplanted to another person whose heart needs to be replaced. It seems this has advantages both for the lung recipient and the heart-only recipient and allows for compatibility in cases where the lungs and heart of the deceased person will not work separately for the two recipients.
- jxramos 5y ago
  can you share a link, I'd like to learn more about this "organ shelf life". Very fascinating. Maybe I was mistakenly applying the sudden death of the brain without blood perfusion to hold likewise for every other organ. Like a heart attack when blood ceases to flow into it turns the myocardium to scar tissue. But that must not be an instant process, probably takes some time. I know temperature can keep tissues viable longer too, so that's another variable to consider.
  - Someone 5y ago
    The brain doesn’t die suddenly without blood perfusion, either. If it did, heart transplants wouldn’t work at all.
    - rcxdude 5y ago
      For the brain it's pretty damn quick (minutes before significant damage). heart transplants rely on being able to run an artificial heart and lung machine to oxygenate and pump the blood while the heart is stopped, removed, and replaced.
  - jxramos 5y ago
    This article is pretty fascinating, never knew about so called preservation solution https://www.livescience.com/how-long-can-donated-organs-last-before-transplant.html https://www.livescience.com/how-long-can-donated-organs-last...
- klipt 5y ago
  Fun social engineering fact: countries that make organ donation (on death) opt-out instead of opt-in have much shorter waiting lists for organs. The USA could save thousands of lives by switching to opt-out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_donation#Opt-in_versus_opt-out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_donation#Opt-in_versus_o...
  - njarboe 5y ago
    Funnier social engineering fact: If it's legal for people sell their kidneys, wait lists for kidneys goes to zero[1]. Too bad only one country in the world does that. Another fun fact. The US government spends more on dialysis than the budget for NASA. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_trade_in_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_trade_in_Iran
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Presumed consent would effectively end waiting lists for most organs.
    - ricardobeat 5y ago
      From news sources I found, it looks like the system in Iran works exactly as one would expect: the poor and desperate end up with one less kidney while not significantly benefitting from the trade. Which is precisely the reason such sales are outlawed worldwide.
      - JamesBarney 5y ago
        Kidney donors in Iran get ~6 month salary, kidney donors in the U.S. get 0 months salary. Are Iranian kidney donors the ones getting scammed?
        echelon 5y ago
        Kidneys in the US are largely sourced from cadavers. If we enticed poor people to sell their kidneys, some percentage of them would wind up needing kidneys again without an ability to pay for them. This turns into a kidney marketplace where the rich win out over the poor. FCFS with triage based on need, immunocompatibility, and health outcome is the most equitable model.
- jdsully 5y ago
  Where I am being on an organ donor list also makes you eligible to be used as a cadaver. I’m not comfortable being prodded by med students but would give an organ.
- ectopod 5y ago
  Sure, but "dead" is a Humpty Dumpty word. Some organs need the donor to be legally but not colloquially dead. In other words, you are dead and your heart is still beating.
- generalizations 5y ago
  Considering that some people have been revived without side effects after multiple hours of being brain-dead (e.g. famous example of women who drowned in icy water), how 'dead' is 'dead', in the context of being an organ donor? I've heard it said that "you're not dead until you're warm and dead", but 6-12 hours doesn't seem like a lot of time, to make sure you're not coming back. e.g., I drown in an icy pond, and I'm found after 5 hours. I might be revived, I might not...but the heart only has an hour before it's toast.
  - manquer 5y ago
    Clinical Death != brain dead, Clinical death has a very well defined and nearly irreversible process [1]. The longest human is known to be revived is only in the range 10-15 minutes. Brain damage is quite likely at this point. The longest for an animal is for cat - 1 Hour. Only clinically dead people are eligible for organ transplantation [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death
    - generalizations 5y ago
      That's what I'm concerned about. Clinical death is apparently survivable. > Reduced body temperature, or therapeutic hypothermia, during clinical death slows the rate of injury accumulation, and extends the time period during which clinical death can be survived. The decrease in the rate of injury can be approximated by the Q10 rule, which states that the rate of biochemical reactions decreases by a factor of two for every 10 °C reduction in temperature. As a result, humans can sometimes survive periods of clinical death exceeding one hour at temperatures below 20 °C.[20] The prognosis is improved if clinical death is caused by hypothermia rather than occurring prior to it; in 1999, 29-year-old Swedish woman Anna Bågenholm spent 80 minutes trapped in ice and survived with a near full recovery from a 13.7 °C core body temperature. It is said in emergency medicine that "nobody is dead until they are warm and dead."[21] In animal studies, up to three hours of clinical death can be survived at temperatures near 0 °C.[22][23] I'd rather not be harvested too quickly, when I could have been revived without issue.
      - 5y ago
larrik 5y ago
I'm assuming it's that you can get a kidney transplant from a family member who is lying in the OR next to you. Deceased donors are transported from wherever they died.
throwaway81523 5y ago
They collect the organs from people who have just died, such as in car crashes. In the paperwork for getting a California driver license, you check a box saying whether you are willing to be an organ donor. If you check yes and you are later killed in a crash, they immediately bring your remains to a hospital that is always awaiting such deliveries, and a transplant operation gets going right away. Motorcycles are sometimes called "donorcycles" because of the high likelihood that any given crash will be fatal, and that the rider is young and healthy and thus a highly desirable source of transplant material.
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  A doctor friend of mine would joke about it being good organ transplant weather when it was raining, because they’d get dead motorcyclists turning up in the rain so frequently.
- btilly 5y ago
  People needing organ donations are sometimes told to move to Florida. Florida motorcyclists are not generally required to wear helmets. Therefore they more efficiently get to the "donor" stage.
- Causality1 5y ago
  It's rather astonishing that all the safety regulations for cars manage to exist in the same legal system that allows motorcycles on public roads at all. Last I read the death risk ratio was about 24x.
  - taneq 5y ago
    I’m still amazed by this one. My first thought on riding a 250 was “how is this possibly legal?” And then the jump to a big bore (non-cruiser) is completely insane.
  - _carbyau_ 5y ago
    As a motorcycle rider (every day commuter) I often think that if motorcycles didn't already exist, they wouldn't be allowed to. As per sibling comment, maybe the only reason they are tolerated is that the risk is statistically largely to the rider themselves. IE the person taking the risk is largely the target of the consequences. If motorcycles somehow magically penetrated into peoples cars in a crash I think people would rule them out pretty quick.
robbiep 5y ago
Non-heartbeat donors can be for corneal, bone and skin grafts