Transplant (surgery) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Organ transplant |
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Reenactment of the first heart transplant, performed in South Africa
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| Specialty | {{#statements:P1995}} |
| MeSH | D016377 |
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Medicine, Surgery |
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Education required
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Hospitals, Clinics |
An organ transplant is a special kind of surgery. It happens when a person needs a sick or damaged organ replaced. Doctors take a healthy organ from another person, called a donor. This new organ is then placed into the patient's body.
Most of the time, the healthy organ comes from someone who has recently passed away. However, some organs, like a kidney, or tissues, like bone marrow, can be donated by living people. This is done without causing much harm to the donor.
A big challenge with transplants is something called transplant rejection. This is when the patient's immune system sees the new organ as a foreign invader. It then tries to attack and destroy it. To stop this, doctors give patients special medicines. These drugs help to quiet down the immune system. The downside is that these medicines can also make the patient more likely to get other infections.
To make sure a transplant has the best chance of working, doctors do many tests. They check how well the donor's organ matches the patient's body. A good match helps to lower the risk of rejection.
Types of Organ Transplants
There are many different kinds of organ and tissue transplants. Each one helps people with specific health problems.
- Heart transplant: Replacing a failing heart with a healthy one.
- Lung transplant: Replacing one or both diseased lungs.
- Heart-lung transplant: Replacing both the heart and lungs at the same time.
- Kidney transplant: Replacing a kidney that no longer works.
- Skin graft: Moving healthy skin from one part of the body to another. This is often done after burns.
- Xenotransplantation: This is when an organ from an animal is used in a human.
- Autotransplantation: This means moving an organ or tissue from one part of a person's body to another part of the same person's body.
Images for kids
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Alexis Carrel won the Nobel Prize in 1912 for his work on organ transplantation.
See also
In Spanish: Trasplante (medicina) para niños
