In an episode of E.R. I saw recently (though it was no doubt an old episode) one of the doctors was given the task of trying to convince the family of a person on the brink of death to agree for that person to become an organ donor upon death. Whilst trying to convince the family the doctor stated that by becoming an organ donor the soon-to-be-dead person could help up to 50 people.
Now, my knowledge of anatomy is not that great but I am pretty sure there aren’t 50 organs that can be transplanted from one person to another so where does this figure come from? What will each of the 50 people receive from the deceased person? Is blood taken when an organ donor dies? Also, what is the feasibility of “harvesting” all the major organs of the body from one person? I remember reading somewhere on the SDMB about how frantic and impersonal organ harvesting can be as time is a factor so is it really possible to have so many different teams have access to one body in a timeframe small enough for all organs to be usable?
The liver can be ued whole or divided into 2 or more different parts.
Skin can be harvested for use as skin grafts
Bones (especially the two femurs) can be used whole to replace bones, or can be ground up to fill in smaller bony defects.
So most of the recipients would be using the skin and bone.
Once you are including “veins”, it does seem that you could get up to aiding 50 people even if you weren’t offering 50 organs. No idea on how likely that is of course.
So how likely is it that all of the organs and other assorted “items” listed by Sage Rat could be harvested from a single person. It occurs to me that the time taken to harvest so much from one body would be too long for all of the items to be usable, surely the tissue would have died so long after death?
Here is an article about Aussie aerial freestyle skiing medalist Alisa Camplin. She had a knee repair 5 months ago and received a tendon implant from a donor because it would heal more quickly than a synthetic one.