Organ Donation ProcessEnrolling as a Donor
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The altruistic process of donation begins when people perform the simple act of indicating their consent to be a donor by enrolling in their state's donor registry. Most often this happens when obtaining or renewing a driver's license or by going on-line for tShose state registries that have an Internet registration capacity. Most people also tell their family they want to be a donor so their family member can support their decision when needed. Signing up to be a donor usually takes place many years before donation becomes a possibility. At some point, a potential donor is admitted to a hospital because of illness or accident. Most donors are victims of severe head trauma, a brain aneurysm or stroke. Healthcare professionals work hard and long, doing everything possible to save the patient's life while maintaining the patient on mechanical devices. When the medical team has exhausted all possible lifesaving efforts and the patient is not responding, a physician will perform a series of tests, usually on multiple occasions, to determine if brain death has occurred. This is usually done by a neurosurgeon or neurologist in compliance with accepted medical practice and state law. Patients who are brain dead have no brain activity and cannot breathe on their own. Brain death is not coma. Brain death is death. In compliance with federal regulations, a hospital notifies its local organ procurement organization (OPO) of every patient that has died or is nearing death. A hospital gives the OPO information about the deceased to confirm his or her potential to be a donor. If the patient is a potential candidate for donation, an OPO representative immediately travels to the hospital. The OPO representative will search the state's donor registry to see if the deceased had enrolled as a donor. If so, that will serve as legal consent. If the deceased had not registered and there was no other legal consent for donation such as a driver's license indicator, the OPO will seek consent from the next of kin. When consent is obtained, medical evaluation will continue, including obtaining the deceased's complete medical and social history from the family.
If the deceased's evaluation does not rule out donation, the OPO contacts the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) to begin the search for matching recipients. Meanwhile at the hospital, the donor is maintained on artificial support and the condition of each organ is carefully monitored by the hospital medical staff and the OPO procurement coordinator.
The OPO representative arranges the arrival and departure times of the transplant surgical teams. After the surgical team arrives, the donor is taken to the operating room where organs and tissues are recovered in the same sterile and careful way as in any surgery. Tissue recoveries such as bone, cornea, and skin occur after organ recoveries. All incisions are surgically closed and usually do not interfere with open-casket funerals. The transplant operation takes place after the transport team arrives at the hospital with the new organ. Typically the transplant recipient is already at the hospital and may be in the operating room awaiting the arrival of the lifesaving organ. Surgical teams work around the clock as needed to transplant the new organs into the waiting recipients. |
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