You may be unaware that organs from a living donor can be transplanted into another person’s body. In fact, about 7,000 living donor organ transplants were performed last year out of about 48,000 transplants overall, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).
With April being National Donate Life Month, a tip of the hat goes to those thousands of people who are willing to part with one of their two kidneys or part of their liver, the two most commonly transplanted organs from a living donor.
“There are some instances where [living] people donate a part of their lungs and part of their pancreas, but I think for the most part, these are not really done in the mainstream,” said Benjamin Philosophe, MD, surgical director at Johns Hopkins Transplant Center. “Living kidney donation is actually a significant [portion] of organ donation in general,” he said.
Living donors should not have to pay anything for making the donation and that is generally the case.
“Living donor transplants are paid for by the recipient’s insurance, usually,” Philosophe said.
But in addition, there are some out-of-pocket financial considerations that potential living donors should look into. That would be such things as travel costs and lost wages from being away from work, he said.
You can learn more about organ donation, living or not, at unos.org.