By Hadley Gavin
Donated tissue like bone, skin, and heart valves can significantly improve a recipient’s quality of life and help save lives. Becoming a tissue donor can be the perfect opportunity to heal the lives of some people. If you are interested in tissue donation, read on to know important information:
Why Tissue Donation Important?
Donated human tissue can be used in a lot of surgical applications to save and heal lives. Donating tissue can benefit patients in some serious or life-threatening medical situations such as saving patients with serious burns, letting athletes with torn ligaments or tendons heal and regain strength, repairing musculoskeletal structures like skin, teeth, and spinal components, as well as restoring mobility and hope to injured military men and women.
How the Donation Process Works
If somebody dies, accredited tissue recovery organizations get referrals. A person’s eligibility to donate will be initially determined based on a medical assessment and available social and family information such as cause of death, age, immediate proof of infection, and others. If the person is a good candidate for tissue donation, donation experts will search the National Donate Life Registry and the local state donor registry to see if the person has registered their donation decision. If they cannot find the registration in the registries, they will give the legal next of kin to chance to authorize the donation.
Initiation of tissue donation must be done within 24 hours of a person’s death. Donated tissue can be processed and stored for a prolonged period. Also, it can be used in burn cases, bone replacement, and ligament repair. The majority of people are possible tissue donors at the time of death.
The kind of tissue transplant procedure a patient undergoes varies depending on the kind of tissue being donated. For instance, recipients prepare for a heart valve surgery and cornea transplant differently.
Which Tissue can you Donate?
There are a lot of kinds of tissue that you can donate and be used for saving lives. They include corneas for restoring sight, heart valves for repairing cardiac defects, and tendons for rebuilding joints. Also, by donating your tissue like skin, you can help those with burns and your bones to help a patient avoid amputation.
Thousands of people die every year waiting for organ transplants. A lot of patients face long waits and poor medical alternatives for lack of a tissue transplant. Donating your tissue after you die helps end people’s needless suffering and saves lives.
