HERSHEY, Pa. — Every eight minutes, someone new is added to the national organ transplant waiting list, which has more than 103,000 people on it, the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration reports. Just one organ donor can save as many as eight lives, and one tissue donor can help more than 100 others, according to the Gift of Life Donor Program.
"There is a very real need for people to choose to make that gift to others when their life has come to its end," said Theodore DeMartini, a pediatric critical care medicine specialist at Penn State Health Children's Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics at Penn State College of Medicine.
Registering as an organ donor won’t affect your medical care, according to Penn State Health experts, and it takes just minutes to register here. Read on for answers to common questions about organ donation.
Why is organ donation important?
Sometimes, an organ transplant is a person’s only hope for recovery from a life-threatening illness, DeMartini said. Treatments like dialysis for failing kidneys or ventricular assist devices for heart failure aren’t always enough.
"We have a lot of amazing technologies to support children or adults who come in with acute problems and have failing organs, but sometimes the failing organ doesn't recover," DeMartini said. "Sometimes too many underlying problems have accumulated, or the initial damage was so severe that recovery just isn't possible."
In those cases, an organ transplant is the only option, and the only way to get an organ is through donation. Unfortunately, there aren't enough healthy donor organs for everyone who needs them. Over 39,000 Americans receive a lifesaving transplant each year, but many more are waiting, and 17 die each day, notes the Gift of Life Donor Program.
What organs can be donated?
After death, you can donate kidneys, liver, lungs, heart, pancreas, intestines, hands, face, corneas, middle ear, skin, heart valves, bone, veins, cartilage, tendons and ligaments. Living donors can also give a kidney, part of the liver, lung, pancreas or intestine — as well as stem cells. For people on the organ donation waiting list, kidneys are in the highest demand, followed by livers, hearts, pancreases and lungs.
Does registering as an organ donor affect my care?
No, DeMartini said.
"One misconception is that the medical team will focus on getting the patient's organs instead of saving their life. That's absolutely not true," DeMartini said. "Our top priority is the patient and doing everything we can to help them and keep them alive if possible."
The next priority is supporting the patient's family. Health care providers only discuss organ donation with families when a patient is at the end of life.
"Whether a patient donates or not, the care we give is exactly the same. Everything we do is to support the patient as best we can, for as long as we can, and then support the family as best we can during a very trying time," DeMartini said.