The History Of Organ Transplants

Sharing organs is an idea that seems unbelievable to many people. However, with our technology, even after one dies their organs could live on in someone else. An organ transplant is a surgery in which a healthy organ is taking from either a living or dead person and replaces one’s diseased organ. A majority of these operations come from someone who is deceased and has signed a donor registry or expressed this interest to their family (2015). In the United States six types of donations are performed. These six are a transplant of the kidney, pancreas, liver, heart, lung, or intestine. On rare occasions two transplants will be paired together and performed at the same time such as a kidney and pancreas or a heart and lung transplant (Maddix,
2012). The process of finding a new organ is a long and tiring one. Finding a match depends on several features. To find a donor one usually needs to match the blood type, and size of organ. Also taken into consideration to find position on the list is how long someone has been on the list, the distance between receiver and the donor, and how sick the organ recipient is (Maddix, 2012).
The start of organ transplantation was the beginning of an incredible new era that would someday save millions of lives and families from losing loved ones.
Each organ has a different origin and history that goes along with it. The kidney was first attempted by Jaboulay in 1906 when he put a goat and pig kidney into two patients. Both treatments were unsuccessful which lead to the conclusion that the transplantation needed to be from a living human, or a just barely deceased one. Shortly after this discovery, Joseph Murray’s surgical team performed a successful transplant on two identical twins (Watson & Dark, 2012). The first attempt of liver transplantation was done by Starzl in Denver of 1963 but because the patients receiving this transplant are usually very sick, it wasn’t until he moved to Pittsburgh in 1967 that he became more successful. Even after Starzl moved, it wasn’t until the realization that the liver needed to be cooled before surgery that it was a successful treatment option (Watson & Dark, 2012). The first successful heart transplant was performed by Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town, Africa in 1967. Knowing it was possible, many cardiac transplants were attempted with only a few patients surviving to leave the hospital. However, in 1986 more than 2000 successful procedures were done annually (Watson & Dark, 2012). The lung transplant had many failures with patients living only as long as 3 weeks after the surgery. In 1981 Reitz and his colleagues were
successful in performing a long lasting transplant (Watson & Dark, 2012).
Organ transplantation has come incredibly far from the beginning and now surgeons have a set procedure that they are supposed to follow.
The procedure for a heart transplant is an intense procedure and requires a closely monitored stay of 7-14 days. When the patient first get news that a donor heart has been found, they are required to start their fast before the procedure which will follow shortly. At the hospital, an IV will be started in the hand or arm to administer necessary fluids and medication. The patient will receive a catheter which is a tube inserted into the bladder to remove urine (2013). Anything such as jewelry or hair that may be in the way of the surgery will be removed, and the patient will be put under a general anesthetic during the surgery. Before beginning the operation, a tube is inserted through the mouth into the lungs to breath for the patient (2013). After the surgical site is cleaned, a large incision will be made from ones adam’s apple down to their navel and the sternum is pulled apart to expose the heart. A bypass tube will be put in the place of the heart to help the body continue pumping blood. Once the heart is free of all blood and the machine is doing all the circulation, the infected heart will be taken out (2013). Immediately after removal, the healthy heart will be put in place of the old heart and will be reconnected with the blood vessels so the machine can be removed. Before releasing the sternum back to place, the heart is
restarted with a defibrillator and checked for and blood leakage. Once the heart is fully functional, the sternum is released and the skin rejoined. A tube is occasionally inserted into the chest around the heart to remove any fluids that may gather. A bandage is placed over the incision and the patient is escorted to the Intensive Care Unit (2013).