Types of donations and donors

Types of donations

Hospitals are full of superheroes. However, many people don’t know who these heroes with unique superpowers are. They give you the best imaginable gift ever: the gift of life.

Donating, after all, is giving life. It is universally acknowledged that organs are vital structures needed to live, but do you know what organs and tissues can be donated?

On the one hand, people who have passed away can donate their kidneys, lungs, liver, heart, pancreas and intestines. These donations have been perfected over the years and nowadays they don’t involve any risk. Moreover, a few years ago, more donations such as hand and face donations were admitted. These are really complicated interventions because bones must be fixed, arteries and veins need to adapt and tendons must be repaired.

On the other hand, living people can give a kidney, lung or a part of the liver. The kidney is the most popular organ that is donated. In reference to the liver, cells grow and regenerate until the liver reaches its normal size and that is the reason why a small part of the liver can be donated.

Eyes: cornea and sclera (white of the eye). It is not a known donation but since the 1960s this transplant is carried out, and around 1,800,000 people have restored they view thanks to corneal removal. Sclera donations are used to make prosthetic high-quality eyes that move in unison with the natural and real eye.

Osteotendinous tissues: bones and tendons. Bone donation is really necessary because bones can be used for hip operations, bone tumours, jaw implants and knee replacements. If these donations and surgeries weren't performed, several people would not be able to recover their normal lives and they would not have the possibility to enjoy their favorite sport or physical activities.

Skin: Under usual conditions, skin can repair itself from daily corrosion and abrasion. However, sometimes skin gets damaged or burnt, and it is unable to correct itself without help. Moreover, skin cancer is one of the most common melanomas on Earth. If skin transplants were not done, severe burns and cancer patients could have important illnesses, resulting in death.

Hair: hair donation is necessary for women who suffer from breast cancer. Everyone can donate their hair if its length is at least 30 cm. In Pamplona, there are many places to donate: Pinup Salón (Plaza Chantrea nº 2), Escuela de Peluquería y Moda (Plaza San Rafael nº 5), PH Estilistas (Plaza valle de Aranguren 4B) etc.

Eggs and sperm: You can choose to make a sperm donation to help those who can not conceive, either a woman who does not have a male partner or a woman whose partner is not fertile. Besides, egg donation is used for assisted reproduction purposes. To do this, in vitro fertilization is carried out, so the egg is fertilized in the laboratory in order to help a person to become pregnant.

Bone marrow: It is the semiliquid tissue that fills the center of the bones and for some people its donation is the only way to survive. Bone marrow creates blood cells (red cells, white cells, platelets) and it is extremely important to fight some diseases. Many people with leukemia, lymphoma or aplastic anemia need bone marrow transplants to survive. If the illness affects marrow and it becomes useless, a cord blood or medulla transplant can be the only treatment.

Is there a "soul mate” for each person? The answer is yes according to to the Blood Donors Association of Navarre (Adona). However, it is not easy to find it. That’s why it is so important. Patients who need bone marrow donation have only 1 possibility among 70.000 to find that compatible "soul mate" that will save their life."

There are three types of bone marrow transplants:

Autologous bone marrow transplant: cells from the marrow are removed from the donor before they undergo a radiation treatment like chemotherapy. Then, after the risky treatment, cells are put back in your body.
Allogeneic bone marrow transplant: donors donate their cells and they are transplanted into the recipient.
Umbilical cord blood transplant: medulla cells are removed from a baby's umbilical cord soon after birth. Those bone marrow cells are usually frozen and collected until another newborn needs them.

Organs

Tissues

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Blood: In a normal donation around 450ml of blood are extracted, and additional 30ml are taken to the laboratory to specify the blood group and analyze the quality of the blood. These laboratory tests are essential because they prevent the transmission of diseases, such as HIV or viral hepatitis. Blood donors must be 18 years old or over, must weigh more than 50kg and should be in good health. Despite what we have written in the previous text about the amazing Spanish organ donor-rate, currently in our country, we have not reached the minimum blood donations recommended by the WHO (World Health Organization). To donate blood in Pamplona, you can go to Irunlarrea Street 3, in front of the Hospital of Navarre.

If you want to see our interviews about blood donation click here

Pablo Ráez, who died of leukaemia in 2017, started an incredible campaign to increase the number of bone marrow donors l Instagram: @srraez

Do you think that only deceased people can donate their organs? Can people who are alive donate? What about children? Is it true that both my face and my identity can be transplanted? To answer these and many more questions, read the article below.

Living donors

Living donation is the possibility to save a life while you are still living, you are not dead. This type of donation offers a marvelous choice for ill patients because many kidney and liver patients can receive a perfect organ really easily and in a short period of time. There are various types of living donation, such as the directed, the non-directed and the paired donation. On the one hand, the directed donation is when you donate to a biological relative, a famaly member. On the other hand, in non-directed donations the donor does not choose the specific recipient who will recive the transplant. The match is based on medical compatibility, for example, it can be based on the blood type. Finally, the paired donation is not so common because it involves multiple living donors and transplant candidate pairs.

Given that you may be thinking of being a living donor, you should take into account that you have to be in good physical and mental health, and you must be older than 18 years of age. In 2017, 42,154 people donated a living organ (there were 36,125 kidney donors, 6,012 liver donors and 17 lung donors). These data do not take into account human organ trafficking even though it might be considered living donation.

Pediatric donors

As currently reported by the US Department of Health & Human Services, there are nearly 2,000 children under the age of 18 on the US national transplant waiting list. Pediatric donation is a difficult subject because it means that your child has gone. The loss of a kid is always tragic but by allowing the donation, there is an option to save other children’s lives. As time goes by, pediatric organ donation-rate will increase and they will improve the lives of many children and adults who are awaiting an organ. This type of donation is not new. In fact, in 1994 a child was born in order to donate her organs.

Donating a child’s organ can translate into hope, illusion and optimism. Although it is true that donating is a painful decision for many parents, it is one of the deepest acts of solidarity and love that can be offered.

If you want to see an emotional video of the BBC about a pediatric donor, click here.

An original campaign made by Second Life Toys

VCA donors

(Vascularized composite allotransplantation)

The US National Library of Medicine defines vascularized composite allotransplantation as “the transfer of a vascularized human body part containing multiple tissue types (skin, muscle, bone, nerves, and blood vessels) as an anatomical and/or structural unit from a human donor to a human recipient”. The most normal VCAs are for hand and face transplants. This transplants give identity to people who have suffered from an outrageous and devastating injury or illness. VCAs are an emerging branch of the medicine that provides a modern point of view for reconstructive procedures and cosmetic issues. However, there are many challenges that make this reconstructive technique harder and very few donations are valuable. Therefore, most VCA donors are donors who died and their bodies are recycled.

Before a VCA transplant is performed, it is usual to make a Ritual of Honor in the name of the donor. In these rituals, doctors and other professionals stop working and, in silence, they go to the hallway as a sign of respect. If you like series or shows, you can see this ritual in the TV series The Good Doctor, in the 14th chapter of the 2nd season.

Cameron Underwood before and after his VCA transplant | NYU LANGONE HEALTH

As stated by Donate Life America, deceased organ donation is the process of giving an organ or a part of an organ, after the donor’s death, for the purpose of transplantation to another person. Therefore, at the end of your life, you have the opportunity to give life to others. This type of donation is only possible when the donor died under circumstances that resulted in a fatal brain injury, normally from massive trauma resulting in bleeding, swelling or lack of oxygen in the brain. In 2017, 135,860 organs were transplanted in the whole world, thanks to 34,096 deceased donors. Several organs can be donated after dead: kidneys, lungs, hearts, livers, intestines, pancreas and tissues (corneas, tendons, bones etc.).

Deceased donors

These donations have an important problem: the time of preservation of organs. Time is critical when you have to transplant an organ. For instance, the human heart has to be transplanted four to six hours after its recovery or it can no longer be used. Because of that, although millions of us have registered to become deceased donors, very few of us die in a way that lets us share our organs. Taking this into account, Jack Kevorkian proposed a controversial project, which defended the organ donation of prisoners sentenced to death in the USA. He suggested recovering the organs of convicted felons because of the scarcity of useful organs.

Do you want to become a deceased donor? If you want to donate your organs after you die, you can ask for a donor card. The donor card is a document that testifies your desire to be a donor after death. But the card has no legal value and that is why it is necessary to communicate to your family the desire to be donor, so that they authorize the extraction of organs. The card can be obtained through the Autonomous Coordination of Transplants in your autonomous community. The telephone number of the Coordination in Navarre is 848423528.

A nurse prepares the operating room to remove tissues from a corpse in the Institute of Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Catalonia | EFE | Toni Albir

“I think you should automatically donate your organs because that would turn the balance of organ donation in a huge way. I would donate whatever anybody would take” George Clooney

DONATION'S GENERATION