Why Give? - Organ Donation Information
Where do the livers for liver transplants come from?
 In the majority of cases, livers come from people
who have just died. This type ofdonor is called
a “cadaveric donor” or “deceased donor”. Deceased donor livers
can be transplanted
either as a “whole” organ or as a “reduced size”
organ into the patient with end-stage liver failure. Reduced
size liver
transplantation is the replacement of a whole
diseased liver with a portion of a healthy donor liver. Reduced-size
liver
transplants are most often performed on children,
because this allows children to receive organs from donors
who are bigger
in size than they are. All donated livers are
tested before transplant surgery. The testing makes sure
that the liver is
healthy, matches the recipient’s blood type,
and is the right size so it has the best chance of working
in the patient’s body.
Sometimes a healthy person will donate part of
his or her liver for a particular patient. This
kind of donor is
called a living-related donor, and an option for
some families. A living-related donor transplant
allows an adult donor to voluntarily
give permission to remove a portion of his or her
liver to give to a child. The donor operation
itself is long and has potential
risks for a normal healthy adult. However, a major
benefit to living-related donor transplantation
is timing. Doctors decide
– based on blood type, size, and other donor health
issues – whether the child and the donor are
good candidates for a living-related
donor liver transplant.
How long does it take to get a deceased donor/new
liver?
If a patient requires a liver transplant in Canada,
his/her name will be placed on a waiting list
kept at the Trillium
Gift of Life network, Ontario's organ
and tissue
donation agency.
The patient’s blood type, body size, and how
sick he/she is all play a role in when he/she
will receive a deceased
donor liver.
In Canada, the rate of organ donation continues
to fall short of meeting the need/demand for
organ transplantation. Canada’s
organ donor rate is about 13 donors per million
people, compared with 20 per million in the United
States, and more than 31 per
million in countries such as Spain. For more
information about organ and tissue donation in
Ontario, check
out www.giftoflife.on.ca
<< Back | Next >>
|
