By donating your organs and tissue after you die, you can save or improve as many as 75 lives. Many families say that knowing their loved one helped save or improve other lives helped them cope with their loss. It’s especially important to consider becoming an organ donor if you belong to an ethnic minority.

The most common reasons cited for not wanting to donate organs were mistrust (of doctors, hospitals, and the organ allocation system), a belief in a black market for organs in the United States, and deservingness issues (that one’s organs would go to someone who brought on his or her own illness, or who could be a “bad …

With organ donation, the death of one person can lead to the survival of many others. The donor is only kept alive by a ventilator, which their family may choose to remove them from. This person would be considered legally dead when their heart stops beating.

Living organ donors can donate: one kidney, a lung, or a portion of the liver, pancreas, or intestine. Learn more about deceased donation, living donation, and the transplantation process. By registering as an organ, eye, and tissue donor, you can also leave behind the gift of sight.

Potential risks of a heart transplant may include:

• Infection.
• Bleeding during or after the surgery.
• Blood clots that can cause heart attack, stroke, or lung problems.
• Breathing problems.
• Kidney failure.
• Coronary allograft vasculopathy (CAV).
• Failure of the donor heart.
• Death.

You will feel tired and sore for several weeks after surgery. You may have some brief, sharp pains on either side of your chest. Your chest, shoulders, and upper back may ache. The incision in your chest may be sore or swollen.

Creating the Ghost Heart This skeletal tissue, when drained of blood, is white and is what gives a “ghost heart” its name. By removing the blood vessels, she also removed the antigens that the organ recipient’s body might reject.

red

Human blood is red because hemoglobin, which is carried in the blood and functions to transport oxygen, is iron-rich and red in color. Octopuses and horseshoe crabs have blue blood. This is because the protein transporting oxygen in their blood, hemocyanin, is actually blue.