About Live Donation

Save a Life

What is a Live Donor?

Live donors are healthy individuals who choose to donate a kidney or a portion of their liver to a friend, family member or even someone they do not know who has end-stage organ disease.

There are three types of living donors:

Living related donors

Individuals who are a blood relative to the transplant recipient such as a parent, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, nephew, or niece.

Living unrelated donors

Individuals who are not a blood relative to the transplant recipient. This may include a spouse, friend, neighbor, coworker, brother-in-law, or sister-in-law.

Directed (anonymous)/non-directed (altruistic) donors

Individuals who offer to donate a kidney or portion of their liver to those on the waiting list. Donors and recipients do not know each other but can meet later if both sides agree.

Why Live Donation?

The Statistics are Alarming

Currently in the US, 96,000 people are waiting for a kidney and 11,000 are waiting for a liver. Another person is added to the waiting list every 9 minutes and 17 people die each day waiting for a transplant. Both organs can be donated by a living person.

Benefits of Live Donation

Making a living organ donation can be rewarding. Most donors feel a special sense of well-being because they may have helped save a life. A living donor removes a person from the waiting list, which is currently above 114,000 people. This allows the people on the waiting list who cannot find a living donor a better chance of receiving the gift of life from a deceased donor.

How does Live Donation work?

While you are born with two kidneys, you can live a full life with just one. With live-donor kidney transplant, a healthy kidney is removed from the donor and placed into the recipient. With live-donor liver transplant, a portion of the donor’s healthy liver is removed and placed into the recipient. Due to the liver’s unique ability to regenerate, the liver grows back to its full size in the donor and recipient in just a few months.

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