Transplantable organs and tissues

The most common procedure is to take a working heart from a recently deceased organ donor (allograft) and implant it into the patient.

It is also possible to take a heart from another species (xenograft), or implant a man-made artificial one, although the outcome of these two procedures has been less successful in comparison to the far more commonly performed allografts.

While the precise details of surgery will depend on the exact type of transplant, there are many steps which are common to all of these procedures.

Prior to operating on the recipient, the transplant surgeon inspects the donor lung(s) for signs of damage or disease.

[1] A heart-lung transplant is a procedure carried out to replace both heart and lungs in a single operation.

Due to a shortage of suitable donors, it is a rare procedure; only about a hundred such transplants are performed each year in the United States.

Once suitable donor organs are present, the surgeon makes an incision starting above and finishing below the sternum, cutting all the way to the bone.

Internal paddles can be used to apply a small electric shock to the heart to restore proper rhythm.

At present, pancreas transplants are usually performed in persons with insulin-dependent diabetes who have severe complications.

[3] The most common indications in adults are ischemia (22%), Crohn's disease (13%), trauma (12%), and desmoid tumor (10%); and in pediatrics, gastroschisis (21%), volvulus (18%), and necrotizing enterocolitis (12%).

The surgical procedure is performed by ophthalmologists, medical doctors who specialize in eyes, and are often done on an outpatient basis (the patient goes home following surgery).

Stem cell transplantation is a medical procedure in the fields of hematology and oncology, most often performed for people with diseases of the blood, bone marrow, or certain types of cancer.

Stem cell transplantation was pioneered using bone-marrow-derived stem cells by a team at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center from the 1950s through the 1970s led by E. Donnall Thomas, whose work was later recognized with a Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.

His work also reduced the likelihood of developing a life-threatening complication called graft-versus-host disease.

Collecting peripheral blood stem cells[6] provides a bigger graft, does not require that the donor be subjected to general anesthesia to collect the graft, results in a shorter time to engraftment, and may provide for a lower long-term relapse rate.

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation remains a risky procedure with many possible complications; it has traditionally been reserved for patients with life-threatening diseases.

Implantation of a porcine valve is a type of Xenotransplantation, or Xenograft, which means a transplant from one species (in this case a pig) to another.

These drugs cause the recipient to have a weak immune system and react severely even from minor infections.

The first leg transplant between genetically different people was performed in 2011, led by surgeon Pedro Cavadas.

Ovary transplantation, giving rise to successful pregnancies, will result in children who will have the genetic inheritance of the organ donor and not the recipient.

This bypasses the need for immune suppressants to maintain the function of the donated ovary, which is not vital for survival.

One example of this is Lili Elbe who received an ovary transplant in the early 1930s but died shortly thereafter due to various complications.