• Question: How do transplants work?

    Asked by to Del, Catherine, John, Krishna, Mo Rassul on 14 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Catherine Mansfield

      Catherine Mansfield answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      A transplant is where we take a healthy organ from one person (dead or alive) and use it to replace a damaged organ in another person to help save their life or to improve their quality of life.

    • Photo: Adelle Thrower

      Adelle Thrower answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      When someone donates an organ they must be able to match the person who is getting it. There are different blood groups and other things that mean not everyone’s organs can be out into anyone else’s. This is why some people have to wait a long time for an organ as the ones that are available arnt a good match.
      When the organ is transplanted into someone then it will
      function like normal, but there is a rick of our body rejecting it as ultimately it is foreign to our bodies- this is why it’s important to get close matching and also there is medicine that can reduce the risk if rejection. Many people who get organs live very good healthy lives for a long time.

    • Photo: Krishna Mohan Surapaneni

      Krishna Mohan Surapaneni answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Transplantation is the act of surgically removing an organ from one person and placing it into another person. Transplantation occurs because the recipient’s organ has failed or has been damaged through illness or injury.

      Basically, doctors remove the old organ and replace it with the new one. If a patient needs a new heart, they put him on a heart-lung machine for the duration of the operation, remove the heart and put the new one in place. Of course it takes hours to make sure all the arteries and veins are sewn properly, but its as simple as removing the old one to replace it with a new one. In order to minimise the chance of the body not rejecting the new organ, it should be of the same blood type at the very least. The patient will still have to take immunosuppresants throughout the course of their life. The way rejection works is that your immune system will detect the foreign object as an intruder, and will send white blood cells to attack it, same way as it would do to a virus or bacteria. The immunosuppresants however, will subject the patient to a higher risk of illnesses due to his lowered immune system.

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