• Question: if you have to get an organ transplant, how high is the chance that you will not survive.

    Asked by anon-202723 to Rebecca, Raashid, Matthew, Marie, Hanna, Gareth on 4 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Gareth Nye

      Gareth Nye answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      It really depends on the organ – 5 years after a heart transplant 3 quarters are still alive but 5 years after a lung transplant on a half is alive. The problem with transplants is trying to trick the receivers body into thinking the new organ belongs to them. Our bodies are built to get rid of anything that seems like a bug or disease so sometimes it thinks a transplant is a bug. Thats why after a transplant you have t take special medicines that put your body defences to sleep – the downside is your more likely to catch bad colds which can be dangerous!

    • Photo: Marie Cameron

      Marie Cameron answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I reckon Gareth has pretty much answered that question (good job, Gareth) – it really depends on the organ. What is also interesting is that you can live quite successfully without many of your organs (or parts of them). You can live with only one working kidney, no appendix, no spleen, part of your liver removed, part of your bowel removed, one lung removed etc. The body is an amazing thing!

    • Photo: Rebecca Gosling

      Rebecca Gosling answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      It really depends on the organ as Gareth has said. It also depends on the person, same patients are more unwell when they get their transplant than others. People do really well after kidney transplants but lungs for example are a lot harder. We are getting better though and that is because of science. We are finding new ways to make the operations safer and to stop the body from rejecting the organ. ( the body is so clever that it notices that the new organ its not its own. The problem is because of this it tries to reject it but fighting against it, we need to trick the body into accepting it as its own!)

    • Photo: Hanna Jeffery

      Hanna Jeffery answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I’ll let the medics answer this one…

    • Photo: Matthew Smith

      Matthew Smith answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      As has been said above, it will depend on the organ. The biggest hurdle is your body rejecting the new organ as ‘foreign’ however. The body has natural defences that detect something that is not you and treats it as a threat and removes it. This is how we fight off many illnesses and are able to stay fit. When you get a transplant, the organ effectively has a flags on it that tell your body that it doesn’t belong there. The only way to stop your defences destroying the new organ is to shut down these defences, which means your new organ is safe, but the rest of your body is more open to attacks!

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