• Question: Which organs can you have a transplant with?

    Asked by angelo775 to Bob, Katie, Nisha, Sallie, Vee on 27 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by hajjifajji99.
    • Photo: Sallie Baxendale

      Sallie Baxendale answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Hearts, lungs, liver, kidney, skin, thymus, pancreas & intestine. Kidneys are most common, then livers, then hearts.
      You can transplant other body parts too.

    • Photo: Bob Bonwick

      Bob Bonwick answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      most of them really, not brains. if the organ donor if alive at the time of the donation (i.e. kidney) then they will survive as they will live quite normally, you have two of most organs as we have “built-in” redundancy, which is to say, some parts of our body we can live without (spleen, gall bladder, intestines), others we cannot. The lungs are split into lobes so we can donate those while alive. If the donor has passed away then (with consent) more can be used to save lives, such as hearts, eyes and livers.

Comments