Why Donate Tissue

Everyone is a potential organ and tissue donor. Typically, organ donors are healthy people who have suffered an irreversible brain injury (most often due to a motor vehicle accident), or a brain hemorrhage resulting in brain death. The health of the donor and his organs and tissues, not his or her age, is what the transplant surgeon considers. The organs and tissues used for transplantation cannot have sustained any damage at the time of death. Brain death means that the brain is no longer functioning and can never recover, but vital organs and tissues can be supported artificially for a limited time and saved for possible transplantation.

Tissues don't require the same special conditions as organs to survive, so tissue donation is possible even after the heart and lungs have stopped working.

Why decide to be an organ and tissue donor?

Donors tell us that their primary motivation for deciding to become an organ or tissue donor is to help someone else. One donor can save or improve the lives of many other people if a variety of different organs and tissues are used. What better way is there to preserve the memory of a loved one who has died prematurely?

Each day, about 74 people receive organ transplants. However, 18 people die each day waiting for transplants that can’t take place because of the shortage of donated organs.(Ref: http://www.organdonor.gov)

Any unused tissue has been voluntarily recalled by the processors and they have notified the transplant physicians, said a statement by the FDA. Physicians who transplanted tissue directly from BTS were also contacted, according to an attorney familiar with the issue.