Sanjivan - The Organ Donation Blog

We saw the three part series done by The Star Ledger on the amazing kidney transplant operations in New Jersey.

I found a youtube video of the Author of the series, Amy Ellis Nutt. Thought I would share that with you guys.

I got an email from Jackie Corle from The Star Ledger about their three-part series on Kidney Donation called “Chain of Life”. I was so emotionally consumed by the powerful showcasing of the story and I can only say -  “Great work guys”.

Here is a small snippet of the video that is part of the three-part series.

Check out the Three parts of the series below.

Part 1: A gift of hope unfolds (Sunday)

Part 2: A dozen surgeries in 36 hours (Monday)

Part 3: Donors and recipients meet

Thanks to The Star Ledger, especially Amy Ellis Nutt, John O Boyle, John Munson, Aristide Economopoulis, Jennifer Brown, Patti Sapone, Matt Rainey, Natalia Jimenez, Jackie Corle and others who have been part of producing this series. They have shown how organ donation can really change somebody’s life.

Thanks to all the doctors, nurses, emergency specialists, other medical professionals and ALL THE DONORS who chose to make a difference. It is very rare such a wonderful gift of life happens on a day and I am happy to be living during one of those days.

Dont forget to see the complete three-part series at Chain of Life at NJ.com

Believe that you too can change somebody’s life. Register for Organ Donation.

Cheers!

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.

The need for kidney donation is the highest ever nowadays. UNOS reports as of January 2006 there are nearly 65,000 people waiting for a kidney transplant.

Second, kidney transplantation is very successful and has been shown to be less costly than dialysis over the long run. And, finally, living kidney donation is emerging as the preferred means of donation because:

• 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 organs from deceased donors.
• The time between procurement of the organ and transplantation to the recipient is minimized.

All of these factors have yielded positive results for recipients. There is less rejection and lower doses of anti-rejection drugs. The transplanted kidney, or “graft,” has better odds of surviving if from a living donor, as show in the following UNOS data for kidney transplants in the U.S from 1995 to 2002.

Thanks to living donors online for this information.

Living Donors make up almost 50% of all the donations in the U.S. Even though the term - “living donors” sounds simple, I would like to go little more in detail about what it means and how it means to you.

You and I can donate some of our organs and still remain healthy and live a long life. Not only we live healthy and long, we also help another person live long by donating our organ/tissue.

The following organs can be donated by living donors - kidney, liver, lung, intestine, pancreas.

I will go more in to details in the following days to come. If you have any questions meanwhile, please don’t hesitate to write a comment and I will surely respond to them.