http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/10/health/artificial-heart-555-days-transplant/index.html

While waiting for a human heart transplant, Stan Larkin lived 555 days without the organ at all.

To passers-by, the 25-year-old Ypsilanti, Michigan, resident appeared to be a typical young adult. He enjoyed taking his three toddlers to the park and hanging out with his younger brother, Dominique.
What wasn’t obvious was that a gray backpack Larkin carried was what kept him alive. Inside that bag was the power source for an artificial heart pumping in his chest.
Larkin’s real heart was removed from his body in November 2014. It was replaced with a device that allowed Larkin to stay home instead of in a hospital while waiting to receive a transplant.

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Yikes. Bet he had the worst case of Pump Head ever…

(I got to meet a kid who received a temporary artificial heart transplant. Couple of tubes, small pump, battery pack, and she was on her way home.)

On another note, why the hell does it take 18 months to find a donor heart?

Register to donate your organs

Rule 303 said:

On another note, why the hell does it take 18 months to find a donor heart?

Register to donate your organs

Possibly because healthy hearts aren’t so common?

Rule 303 said:

On another note, why the hell does it take 18 months to find a donor heart?

Register to donate your organs

Devil’s advocate mode: not enough car accidents?
I carry my organ donor’s card always.

mollwollfumble said:

Rule 303 said:

On another note, why the hell does it take 18 months to find a donor heart?

Register to donate your organs

Devil’s advocate mode: not enough car accidents?
I carry my organ donor’s card always.

get cyclists and motorcyclists to carry organ donor cards and it would solve the problem

wookiemeister said:

get cyclists and motorcyclists to carry organ donor cards and it would solve the problem

The risk of death or serious injury is the same for cyclists as car drivers – Roughly 1 in 25,000 for any given year, so not much point – though their organs would be vastly more desirable, for obvious reasons.

Motor cyclists, on the other hand, carry between twenty and forty times more risk, depending who you believe, and there organs are probably much less healthy than…

their

Rule 303 said:

wookiemeister said:

get cyclists and motorcyclists to carry organ donor cards and it would solve the problem

The risk of death or serious injury is the same for cyclists as car drivers – Roughly 1 in 25,000 for any given year, so not much point – though their organs would be vastly more desirable, for obvious reasons.

Motor cyclists, on the other hand, carry between twenty and forty times more risk, depending who you believe, and there organs are probably much less healthy than…

cyclists have healthy hearts

motorcyclists being killed are by my reckoning young men

Rule 303 said:

On another note, why the hell does it take 18 months to find a donor heart?

Register to donate your organs

all depends on imon or uncommon tissue type.

I’m about 13 on the transplant list for my tissue type, but that is still a 2 year wait.
apparently last year they only had 3 donors die with my type, so not many moved on the list

The original story is quite remarkable.

> The original story is quite remarkable.
Agree.
stumpy_seahorse said:

all depends on imon or uncommon tissue type.

I’m about 13 on the transplant list for my tissue type, but that is still a 2 year wait.
apparently last year they only had 3 donors die with my type, so not many moved on the list

(Warning, devil’s advocate mode) 150,000 Australians died last year. Only 3 viable donors out of that must make it an extremely rare tissue type, or doctors are afraid of being sued. Given that waiting lists for transplants in Australia contain about 1,500 people, the time to wait for a transplant ought to average out to half a week.

(Checks web on rareness of tissue types): HLAs are the major cause of organ transplant rejections. Aside from the genes encoding the 6 major antigen-presenting proteins, there are a large number of other genes, many involved in immune function, located on the HLA complex. Diversity of HLAs in the human population is one aspect of disease defense, and, as a result, the chance of two unrelated individuals with identical HLA molecules on all loci is very low.

I suppose that means that tissue types that suppress rejection really could be quite rare.

mollwollfumble said:

> The original story is quite remarkable.
Agree.
stumpy_seahorse said:

all depends on imon or uncommon tissue type.

I’m about 13 on the transplant list for my tissue type, but that is still a 2 year wait.
apparently last year they only had 3 donors die with my type, so not many moved on the list

(Warning, devil’s advocate mode) 150,000 Australians died last year. Only 3 viable donors out of that must make it an extremely rare tissue type, or doctors are afraid of being sued. Given that waiting lists for transplants in Australia contain about 1,500 people, the time to wait for a transplant ought to average out to half a week.

(Checks web on rareness of tissue types): HLAs are the major cause of organ transplant rejections. Aside from the genes encoding the 6 major antigen-presenting proteins, there are a large number of other genes, many involved in immune function, located on the HLA complex. Diversity of HLAs in the human population is one aspect of disease defense, and, as a result, the chance of two unrelated individuals with identical HLA molecules on all loci is very low.

I suppose that means that tissue types that suppress rejection really could be quite rare.

I’m one of the more common tissue types, there is just a very low level of organ donation at the moment.
being on the donor list isn’t enough.
last figures I saw had about 65%(ottomh) rate of family refusal.
also, not all death circumstances are conducive to organs suitable for transplant, some organs can be harvested up to 24 hours after death, some need to be taken immediately (some they prefer to take while the heart is still beating)
and some get damaged during the death, if caused by an accident, etc