How many of us are organ donors?
04-26-2010, 04:01 PM
#101
Member
Join Date: Apr 2010
Posts: 4
Originally Posted by Kerri
That's not true at all, being a paramedic for 8 yrs we work equally hard on everyone. I myself am an organ donor, but unfortunately your next of kin gets to make the ultimate decision. So if you do want your organs donated, make sure your family understands this so that they make sure it happens.
my GS last roll during his accident and put a neck collar on him
till the unit arrived and got his body to respond so they could use
his organs........his neck broke instant and death was instant.
He struggled a week on life support to breath until he was pronounced and they could harvest. It was his most passionate
wish. Again thanks!!
04-26-2010, 05:18 PM
#102
Super Member
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: southern Ca
Posts: 1,154
IT is a noble act for sure.. and something to think about. ...they do not wait til you are dead... if you are on life support they make you comfortable to take the LIVE organs... they are of no use dead. It is wonderful that people are willing to do this for others.
04-26-2010, 05:24 PM
#103
Super Member
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: southern Ca
Posts: 1,154
Ronald Munson, in his commentary, portrayed NHBD donors as "hospitalized, critically ill people who have expressed the wish to become donors when they die". Explaining the motive for dispensing with the previous brain death standard in organ donation, Munson admitted that "Waiting longer (than 5 minutes after the person's heart stops) -- to determine if the donors also satisfy brain-death criteria -- would result in the organs' deteriorating and becoming useless".
But suddenly, this important issue was quickly dropped.
This logically leads to the question: Are there some things about NHBD that the media or organ transplant organizations don't want you to know?
Brain Death and NHBD - Important Distinction
For the past several years, a little-known but disturbing revolution has been occurring in organ donation. In the understandable but sometimes alarming zeal to obtain more organs, the procedure called non-heart-beating organ donation has been quietly added to brain death organ donation in more and more hospitals all over the country.
Although "brain dead" is a term many people erroneously associate with a coma-like condition or use to humorously describe an ignorant person, brain death is a legal and medical term that describes the irreversible loss of total brain function, even when the body can be kept going for a while using technology such as a ventilator. Since 1970, every state has added brain death to the legal and more familiar definition of death as the irreversible end of breathing and heartbeat. The addition of brain death as a legal definition of death revolutionized organ transplantation, because waiting until a person died naturally to harvest organs often resulted in organs too damaged for successful transplant. With brain death, organs could be taken before breathing and heartbeat stopped, and organ transplantation became commonplace. But when brain death did not meet the demand for organs, NHBD was invented in the 1990s as a way to obtain more organs.
NHBD is very different from brain death organ donation. While brain death organ donation means the person is legally dead but still has a heartbeat when organs are harvested, the potential NHBD patient is alive but termed "hopeless" or "vegetative" by a doctor, usually soon after suffering a devastating condition like a severe stroke or trauma and while still needing a ventilator to breathe. Because of the legal acceptance of the so-called "right to die", families or patients can then agree to have the ventilator turned off, a "do not resuscitate" order written and the organs harvested if or when the person's breathing and heartbeat stops.
In NHBD, the ventilator is usually stopped in an operating room while a doctor watches for up to one hour until the heartbeat and breathing stops. After an interval of usually just two to five minutes, the patient is declared dead and the transplant team takes over to harvest the organs. A determination of brain death is considered unnecessary even though Dr. Michael DeVita, one of the inventors of the NHBD protocol, has admitted, "the possibility of (brain function) recovery exists for at least 15 minutes". Nonetheless, Dr. Devita defends waiting only two minutes before harvesting the organs because, as he writes, "the 2-minute time span probably fits with the layperson's conception of how death ought to be determined"2 (emphasis added).
Just as disturbing, sometimes the NHBD patient will unexpectedly continue to breathe for longer than the one hour time limit for NHBD. The transplant is then cancelled but, rather than resuming care, the patient is just returned to his or her room to eventually die without treatment.
But suddenly, this important issue was quickly dropped.
This logically leads to the question: Are there some things about NHBD that the media or organ transplant organizations don't want you to know?
Brain Death and NHBD - Important Distinction
For the past several years, a little-known but disturbing revolution has been occurring in organ donation. In the understandable but sometimes alarming zeal to obtain more organs, the procedure called non-heart-beating organ donation has been quietly added to brain death organ donation in more and more hospitals all over the country.
Although "brain dead" is a term many people erroneously associate with a coma-like condition or use to humorously describe an ignorant person, brain death is a legal and medical term that describes the irreversible loss of total brain function, even when the body can be kept going for a while using technology such as a ventilator. Since 1970, every state has added brain death to the legal and more familiar definition of death as the irreversible end of breathing and heartbeat. The addition of brain death as a legal definition of death revolutionized organ transplantation, because waiting until a person died naturally to harvest organs often resulted in organs too damaged for successful transplant. With brain death, organs could be taken before breathing and heartbeat stopped, and organ transplantation became commonplace. But when brain death did not meet the demand for organs, NHBD was invented in the 1990s as a way to obtain more organs.
NHBD is very different from brain death organ donation. While brain death organ donation means the person is legally dead but still has a heartbeat when organs are harvested, the potential NHBD patient is alive but termed "hopeless" or "vegetative" by a doctor, usually soon after suffering a devastating condition like a severe stroke or trauma and while still needing a ventilator to breathe. Because of the legal acceptance of the so-called "right to die", families or patients can then agree to have the ventilator turned off, a "do not resuscitate" order written and the organs harvested if or when the person's breathing and heartbeat stops.
In NHBD, the ventilator is usually stopped in an operating room while a doctor watches for up to one hour until the heartbeat and breathing stops. After an interval of usually just two to five minutes, the patient is declared dead and the transplant team takes over to harvest the organs. A determination of brain death is considered unnecessary even though Dr. Michael DeVita, one of the inventors of the NHBD protocol, has admitted, "the possibility of (brain function) recovery exists for at least 15 minutes". Nonetheless, Dr. Devita defends waiting only two minutes before harvesting the organs because, as he writes, "the 2-minute time span probably fits with the layperson's conception of how death ought to be determined"2 (emphasis added).
Just as disturbing, sometimes the NHBD patient will unexpectedly continue to breathe for longer than the one hour time limit for NHBD. The transplant is then cancelled but, rather than resuming care, the patient is just returned to his or her room to eventually die without treatment.
04-27-2010, 08:23 AM
#107
Junior Member
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: New Westminster, BC, Canada
Posts: 132
Thanks for the clarification on the differences between brain death and NHBD. I know it is agonizing for the donor families and even when it is the wish of the donor, it is still hard sometimes. All recipients of tissue or organs thank their donor families daily for the gift of life. Bless all of you!
05-29-2010, 11:52 AM
#108
Google Goddess
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Central Indiana (USA)
Posts: 30,181
Yes, I am an organ donor, they can have anything.
My hubby had been a severe diabetic since 4th grade, 3 shots of insulin a day, in 1989 both kidneys shut down and was on home dialysis, than on September 18, 1990 he got a new kidney and pancreas transplant (he is no longer a diabetic)
The donor was a young guy riding a motorcycle, no helment on and was brain dead. He had on is drivers license to be an organ donor.
He helped lots of people and the surgeries were all done at Methodist Hospital, Indianapolis, Indiana
1. my hubby got kidney and pancreas
2. guy the other kidney
3. lady lung
4. another lady lung
5. guy with heart
all of these transplants was done within 24 hours at the same hospital.
also skin, eyes, etc. was donated to others in USA
My husband now has a better life. Thank you for organ donors.
Karen "Craftybear
My hubby had been a severe diabetic since 4th grade, 3 shots of insulin a day, in 1989 both kidneys shut down and was on home dialysis, than on September 18, 1990 he got a new kidney and pancreas transplant (he is no longer a diabetic)
The donor was a young guy riding a motorcycle, no helment on and was brain dead. He had on is drivers license to be an organ donor.
He helped lots of people and the surgeries were all done at Methodist Hospital, Indianapolis, Indiana
1. my hubby got kidney and pancreas
2. guy the other kidney
3. lady lung
4. another lady lung
5. guy with heart
all of these transplants was done within 24 hours at the same hospital.
also skin, eyes, etc. was donated to others in USA
My husband now has a better life. Thank you for organ donors.
Karen "Craftybear
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