Sanjivan - The Organ Donation Blog

There is a tremendous need for liver transplants that isn’t being met through cadaveric donation. UNOS figures show more than 16,000 people await liver transplants, yet only about 5,000 transplants actually occur. There is an enormous gap.

Enter living donation. The special characteristics of the human liver make living donation unique. While each of us has only one liver, it is a large, segmented organ that regenerates, allowing a surgeon to remove a portion yet have both the recipient and donor with complete livers within a matter of a few months.

Living donation has important advantages over cadaveric donation:

• The waiting time for a transplant recipient can be significantly reduced.
• The procedure can be scheduled at a time convenient for both the donor and recipient.
• The quality of the donated organ tends to be superior to cadaveric organs.
• The time between procurement of the organ and transplantation to the recipient is minimized

Thanks to livingdonorsonline.org for this information.