Each day, nearly 60 Americans receive a transplanted kidney, liver, or other organâ€"a literal "second chance at life"â€"but 11 others die waiting for an organ transplant. The number of donors, although rising, is not growing fast enough to meet the increasing demand. Intended to improve the current system of organ procurement and allocation, the "Final Rule," a 1998 regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, sparked further controversy with its attempts to eliminate the apparent geographic disparities in the time an individual must wait for an organ. This book assesses the potential impact of the Final Rule on organ transplantation. It also presents new, original analyses of data, and assesses medical practices, social and economic observations, and other information on: access to transplantation services for low-income populations and racial and ethnic minority groups; organ donation rates; waiting times for transplantation; patient survival rates and organ failure rates leading to retransplantation; and cost of organ transplantation services.

At the brink of the third millennium organ transplanta mati on how, in the case of shortage, a fair allocation of tion will become routine and the results will be so ex the scarce organs can be achieved. This is a very cellent that every patient in need of a transplant timely subject that continues to be discussed between deserves to be transplanted. How to provide every doctors and between laymen. patient with his or her organ and how to guarantee This book serves the needs of several groups of that the organ is in a superb condition? That is the specialists working with transplant patients. Firstly, the challenge for all of us privileged to work in this doctors who are directly involved in the care of the magnificent field of medicine. multi-organ donor, and who have to collaborate to do In this book, an international team of experts has the best for their recipients. Heart surgeons might like laid down their intellectual knowledge on the process to learn from liver surgeons and vice versa. Secondly, that precedes successful transplantation: Procurement, the paramedical specialist who is involved in the treat Preservation and Allocation. In four sections important ment of transplant patients and their families will find aspects of this preamble of the actual transplantation in this book many answers to questions. Students can are dealt with. also use it as a source for general information.

Transplantation is a medically successful and cost-effective way to treat people whose organs have failed--but not enough organs are available to meet demand. T. M. Wilkinson explores the major ethical problems raised by policies for acquiring organs. Key topics include the rights of the dead, the role of the family, and the sale of organs.

Although the history of organ transplant has its roots in ancient Christian mythology, it is only in the past fifty years that body parts from a dead person have successfully been procured and transplanted into a living person. After fourteen years, the three main issues that Robert Veatch first outlined in his seminal study Transplantation Ethics still remain: deciding when human beings are dead; deciding when it is ethical to procure organs; and deciding how to allocate organs, once procured. However, much has changed. Enormous strides have been made in immunosuppression. Alternatives to the donation model are debated much more openly—living donors are used more widely and hand and face transplants have become more common, raising issues of personal identity. In this second edition of Transplantation Ethics, coauthored by Lainie F. Ross, transplant professionals and advocates will find a comprehensive update of this critical work on transplantation policies.