I haven’t been able to find an answer to this. How many times could the same organ be donated?
Say, someone receives a kidney and their body rejects it. The transplant organ has to come out. Can it be given to someone else?
Or, maybe two days after transplant surgery a clot from the patient’s leg travels to his lung and he dies. Can his organs, including the transplanted one, be donated?
What if a successful transplant patient dies 15 years later. Can his organs, including the transplanted one, be donated?
IANAD, and I have no cite, but I believe that once an organ has been transplanted it can’t be re-transplanted. I could be wrong, but that’s my understanding. It’s a one shot deal.
My mother underwent a double lung transplant in July of 2011. She is still recovering and probably has a long road ahead. We don’t know anything about her donor, other than that it was a young person.
In any event, one of her questions for her surgeons was whether she could donate her organs, in effect to provide someone else with the gift that she had been given. Her caregivers told her that she would not be able to donate any of her organs (not just the recently transplanted lungs) due to the toxicity of the medications she is required to take to prevent rejection and infection.
I can remember the look on her face when she was told that she wasn’t going to be able to regift her organs. She was crushed.
Organ donors save so many lives. I can understand your mother’s disappointment that she can’t give back to the donor program. I hadn’t considered the anti-rejection drugs they take affecting all the other organs in the body.
Tell her not to worry. There are millions out there to “step in”. My daughter was declared brain dead in 1992 but people live today because of her jest for life.
It’s a human thing,brother.
If she’s open to the gross, she can still be useful and save her family the expense of a fancy funeral: Body farm - Wikipedia . I’m trying to wangle my way into “Goofy” Goff’s site in Hawaii, figuring that’s the only way I’ll ever get to Hawaii, though too late to enjoy it.
In Spain one of the conditions to be able to donate organs or blood is “have not been a recipient of organ donation”. I’ve heard talk of this being reconsidered for cornea recipients, but so far it’s still a no.
NGC2024, while I understand her desire to “pay it forward” in as close a fashion as possible, medical schools are happy to receive donated bodies. Donation must be arranged in advance, details vary by location; for example, my grandfather donated his body to science and did it through the teaching hospital nearest to his home, but when my mother and aunt asked “what happens if he dies while visiting one of us?” they were told the body would just be received and used at the nearest teaching hospital.
Apparently it is indeed possible, though uncommon, for transplanted kidneys to be removed from the recipient after death and donated a second time. An article in USA Today mentions this, and also announces that, for the first time ever, a transplanted kidney from a living donor has just been transplanted again.
Those who cannot donate organs can sometimes still donate tissues - like skin for burn victims - but not always.
My suggestion to those disappointed that they can’t donate organs or tissues when they die is that they become involved in organ donation awareness while they’re alive. Hearing from someone who has been saved because of an organ transplant is a good way to spread the word and get other people to sign up to be donors.
http://donatelife.net/ Can give you some ideas to start, and contacting your state’s board of health will get you connected with someone who can tell you if there are sign-up drives in your area, or other ways you can help.
