- Acute: Usually about 6 months after transplantation
Organ Transplant Rejection
Preventing Rejection
- Mainly:
- Immunosuppression
- Infection prevention
What Causes Rejection?
Signs of Rejection
The recipient's immune system recognizes the transplanted organ as a foreign object and attacks it using cell-mediated and humoral immunity.
- Organ's function declines
- General discomfort
- Pain or swelling in area of organ
- Fever
- Flu-like symptoms
- High blood sugar (pancreas)
- Less urine output (kidney)
- Shortness of breath and less ability to exercise (heart)
- Yellow skin color and easy bleeding (liver)
Types of Organ Transplants
- Heart: Can be preserved for 4-6hrs before transplant. Over 2,600 on transplant list nationwide.
- Liver: Can be preserved for 4-16hrs, can sometimes be split
- Pancreas: Can be preserved for 2-14hrs, often transplanted with kidneys
- Lung: Can be preserved for 4-6hrs. One donor can be source of 2 transplants.
- Kidney: Most commonly transplant organ. Can be preserved for up to 36hrs
- Intestine: Mostly performed on infants and children. Can be preserved for 8-16hrs before transplant.
Types of Rejection
- Hyperacute: Within minutes to hours of transplantation
- Prior blood transfusions
- Multiple pregnancies
- Prior transplantation
- Chronic: Months to years after acute rejection episodes have subsided
- Previous episode of acute rejection
- Inadequate immunosuppression
- Initial delayed graft function
- Donor-related factors
- Reperfusion injury to organ
- Long cold time
- Recipient-related factors
- Posttransplant infection
Organ Rejection Facts
- The first successful organ transplant was performed in 1954 by Dr. Joseph Murray and Dr. David Hume at Brigham Hospital in Boston.
- 123,000 American are on the transplant list.
- Each day 18 Americans die waiting for a transplant.
- Transplanted organs don't last forever.
- About 560 people contract a hidden disease or infection from a transplant.
- Out-of-pocket costs for donors range from $5,000-$20,000.
- A BMI of 30 or less is recommended to receive a transplant.
- The US has both the highest rate of kidney failure and the longest wait for kidney transplants.