INTERESTING FACTS

TRANSPLANTATION IN NUMBERS

18 people die each day.

This is the number of people in Europe who die every day while waiting on a transplant.

Nearly 137 million potential donors.

The Eurotransplant organization coordinates the allocation of organs across Europe. It covers a swathe of European countries with nearly 137 million inhabitants or potential donors.

7000 donations per year.

Thanks to the Eurotransplant system each year over 2000 donors donate their organs and tissues in order to save someone’s life. Almost 7000 organs and tissues get extracted from these donors.

DID YOU KNOW THAT…

Gender difference doesn’t matter?

Female hearts, lungs or other organs and tissues can be transplanted to male body (and vice versa).

One donor can improve life of 8 people?

The organs of one donor can save up to 8 lives. If you add to the equation the patient’s tissues this number goes up to more than 50 people.

Humans are fortunate to have 2 kidneys?

Human beings have 2 kidneys but they need only one to live. That’s why it is possible to donate a kidney and save someone’s life. Kidneys are usually shared between close members of the same family because organ can be received faster and possibility of rejection of the organ may be lower in case of high rate of genetic similarity between relatives.

Individual characteristics are not transmitted with the transplantation?

You’ve seen it in some thriller movies: a person gets a transplant and together with it he receives the new character of an organ’s donor. This is complete fiction – the individual character of a donor never transfers to the recipient. So, if you get a heart transplanted from a great painter you won’t automatically be able to paint like Picasso!

It’s never too late to donate?

Even though the age of the donor is important for a transplant to be successful, it is never too late to donate an organ. If you are completely healthy and in your 80’s you will still be qualified to donate your organs or tissues.

COMMON MYTHS ABOUT TRANSPLANTATIONS

‘A person is not dead as long as their heart is beating’.

Today’s medicine has proven that the real death of a person occurs when their brain dies. The functioning of the heart and lungs can be artificially sustained for some time – this is not the case with the brain. The brain is responsible for the regulation of our body’s physiology and the functioning of the whole organism.

Without it there’s no reasoning, perception or intellect. So, the death of a brain represents the true death of ourselves and our bodies.

‘Doctors can succumb to favoritism or bribery when deciding whom to allocate an organ.’

Organ allocation is considered the most ethically sensitive part of the transplantation process and is therefore based on a transparent and scientifically proven software system that eliminates human bias. There are many factors included in the software equation (medical condition of a patient, age, time spent on the waiting list, tissue and organ compatibility…) which allows for an unbiased allocation and eliminates the subjective influence of medical staff on the transplantation process.

‘Body of a donor is disfigured after the organ extraction’

This is not the case. Organs are extracted by the usual surgical procedures which pay full respect to the donor’s body without mutilating it. What is visible on the donor’s body after the extraction is a normal scar similar to one left after an appendix or gall-bladder operation.

‘There’s a secret medical organization dedicated to stealing of organs’

The existence of such an organization has never been proven and the process of transplantation is very complicated procedure which demands a high degree of technical knowledge and special equipment – it cannot be successfully done outside of special medical facilities. The extraction of healthy organs from donors differs from the usual extraction of the sick organs because the healthy organ requires special preparation in order to be able to continue its function in a new body. It’s very complex and cannot be left to improvisation. Even if there’s a rich person willing to pay for an extracted organ, it would be very difficult to find a suitable match without thorough medical tests.