We have two kidneys, and I know that one can be donated to another person while you’re still alive, because my SIL donated hers to her brother when they were young.
Are there any other organs that this could apply too? I know most of the other well-known organs are singleton. And I doubt anyone is going to give up an eye to help out someone else, no matter how much they are loved.
Might deserve another thread, but also what impact would donating a kidney have on your life expectancy?
Inspired by a reddit thread where a person had posted a photo of a car that was asking for a spare kidney for the owner’s sister.
There are plenty of things we have more than one of, but I got the impression that the OP was looking for things where having more than one doesn’t confer any additional advantage except that we have a spare in case we lose one.
Two eyes are better than one (better depth perception), but testes (or ovaries) might qualify.
Are we restricted to organs that are donatable (using current medical technology)?
Also, veins and small intestine. Though they are usually transplanted into somewhere else on the same patient rather than someone else. (Veins are used for bypass surgery, intestine can replace the esophagus if you have esophageal cancer.)
I was thinking more along the lines of donatable organs, especially something that you would need to get replaced if yours was damaged/diseased. Seems like ovaries and testes might qualify for being donatable, but are probably not actually needed for someone’s continued health. Although their contents are fairly common donations!
Lungs come in pairs, and most people have 4 parathyroids, although that number can vary widely. We also have more bowel than we “need” (you can lose about half of it without adverse effects). Mammals also have twice as many breasts as their average litter size, which comes in handy when it comes to feeding them.
I’ve definitely heard of live-liver donation (usually done between first-degree relatives) but never heard of live lung donation. I did once read about a live heart donation; IIRC, a man with cystic fibrosis needed a lung transplant, and when the lungs are transplanted, usually the heart is too because they are so interconnected. Someone in the same hospital (!) was a good match and received that man’s heart. I heard about it when I saw a news program where they met.
Losing one lung, kidney, or eye is still an impairment to some degree (though you can live with it). And if I understand correctly, losing one ovary would mean only one fertile cycle every two months, instead of one each month, which would also be an impairment. But a man with one testicle functions in all ways just as well as one with two, making that the only organ I know of with a fully-redundant spare.
Do fingers and toes count as “organs” for this? I recall a case where a surgeon lost a thumb and had a big toe transplanted to take its place; it worked well enough that he could still do surgery, and since it was his own toe there were no rejection issues to deal with. EDIT: Also, sometimes nerves are transplanted from one part of a person to another, generally resulting in a small numb spot somewhere low priority while the transplanted nerve fixes something important.
We do have spare adrenal glands, but apparently nobody is even looking into transplanting them because medicinally replacing their function is so much safer and easier than dealing with rejection.
I have. I recall reading of a case where each parent of a child with cystic fibrosis donated a lobe of one of their lungs. The lobes would grow with the kid, and losing a single lobe wasn’t too bad for the parents.
Nothing useful to add other than to recall that one day, some years ago, my father-in-law was telling my sister-in-law about a farmer friend of his who had a duck born with three legs. With wide eyes and mouth she took this in, churned it over for a few seconds and asked “what happened to the other one?”
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. TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD SHE WAS!!!
Heart-lung transplants are certainly done, but it’s usually in cases where a lung disease has also caused a cardiac issue (pulmonary hypertension leading to increased right heart pressures and eventually permanent dysfunction, for example).
Single lung transplants are now pretty common in a variety of localized pulmonary disease states. They’re a little less common than bilateral transplants in CF patients, but singles are still done in some CFers (patient, hospital, and situation specific).