Eurotransplant

Zoë Daudey | Biology | 11-12-2017 | A1E

Table of contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 2
Organs ....................................................................................................................................... 3
Organ transplant ....................................................................................................................... 5
Eurotransplant .......................................................................................................................... 6
Aims and future Eurotransplant ....................................................................................... 7
Opinion about Eurotransplant ................................................................................................ 8
The end ..................................................................................................................................... 9

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Introduction
This is a report about organs, organ transplant and Eurotransplant. You will learn what
organs, organ transplant and Eurotransplant is. I think this is a really interesting subject
that is also very important.

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Organs
An organ is a collection of tissues and serves a function of an organism. It always has 2 up
until 4 tissues. With just one kind of tissue the organ can’t do his job. The human has
more than 50 organs all those organs can be divided in an organ system. All the organs
that are in a system have together one important task for the body. Here are some
examples of organ systems and some organs that belongs to these systems:

Muscular system:

 Thigh muscle
 Biceps
 Triceps

This system is everywhere in your body, it contains all the muscles.

Skeletal system:

 Thigh bone
 Rib
 Skull
 Back bone

This system contains all the bones in your body.

Respiratory system:

 Lungs
 Bronchus
 Windpipe

This system is in the upper part of your body and contains organs that you use to breathe.

Digestive system:

 Small intestine
 Large intestine
 Gullet
 Stomach

This system takes care of what you drink and eat. After lot of processes it makes sure all
the waist from what you ate comes out again.

Nervous system:

 Spinal cord and nerves

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  Brain

This is the system that makes sure that you can feel.

Circulatory system:

 Heart
 Main vein
 Main artery

This system is everywhere in your body. It circulates your blood everywhere in your body.

There are of course a lot more organs those are just really important and lots of people
know them. Every organ is very important. Imagine a life without a heart, that would be
impossible. Without muscles you can’t move anymore and no nerves you won’t be able to
feel anymore. There are a lot of more examples like this. I hope you realize that without a
organ you just can’t live.

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Organ transplant
An organ transplant is when you have a diseased organ you get an operation. In the
operation they will make sure that you get a healthy organ from someone else’s body. It
can come from someone who has died and has signed their states donor registry or told
family that he/she wanted to be a donor.
There are lots of donors that can be transplanted included the heart, kidney, liver,
intestine and lungs.
The kidney is the one that is most transplanted after that the liver and the heart.
There are also tissues that can be transplanted included the skin and bones.
The tree kinds of organ donors are: A heart beating donor, this is someone that is brain
dead. A living donor, this is a donor that is still alive a disadvantage about a living donor is
that there aren’t lots of organs that can be transplanted. A non-heart beating donor,
someone that died because of a cardiac arres (so when the heart stops beating).

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Eurotransplant
This is the organization that is responsible for all the organ donors and the people who
need to receive the organs. It’s a democratic and non-profit organization. It contains all
the tissue-typing laboratories, the transplant hospitals and all the hospitals where organ
donations takes place. Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Croatia, Hungary,
Slovenia and Luxembourg work together in the organization.

The main things they do is: Finding donors and organ receivers, register them, develop
their system and find more countries to participate and of course give people who need
organs in a fair way.

The organization collects information about the organ givers and receivers. They make a
waiting list for the receivers. Then they try to give the organ receivers a donor. This is all
really hard because the donor needs to fits perfectly with the organ receiver.

The organization of Eurotransplant wants to improve the exchange of organs in the EU. So
they started a project that is called FOEDUS to cooperate with more of the EU countries.
To improve this aim it’s important that the EU can work well together.

Eurotransplant started with organ transplantations in the 18th century. It went wrong quite
often in the beginning but technology became better and in mid-20th century a lot organ
transplants took place succesfull. In that time there came better technology, researches
and techniques. Unfortunately the way organ donors where found wasn’t efficient at all.
Patients needed to wait for the perfect donor in the same centre they were treated. But
that changed when a Dutch professor, Dr. Jon J. van Rood found a new way to find
donors. But to do this he needed a central database off all patients waiting for a
donor with the organ they needed. So he found Eurotransplant in 1967. In the
beginning there were 12 centres in 3 countries that participated. Now there are more but
for that time that was already a lot. Instead you needed to search in one centre for a donor
there where a lot more centres with donors. The centre would report the donors they had
and Eurotransplant would make the best possible matches.
It became a success, first it was an experiment but sson it became a foundation. It grew
fast because a lot of centres sought the services Eurotransplant gave. At the end of 1970
Eurotransplant already consisted of 68 centres in 6 countries. They also started to work
with more kinds of organs. In the beginning they only did kidneys but later on they
started with livers, hearts and pancreas, lungs and intestines (the intestines only on a
small scale. From the beginning to now Eurotransplant already helped to find donors for
over 125 thousand transplants.

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Aims and future of Eurotransplant
Eurotransplant aims at a constant improvement of transplant outcomes.
The mission statement and goals of Eurotransplant express its main target: to ensure an
optimal use of available donor organs. The allocation system is based on medical and
ethical criteria.

Two big problems of Eurotransplant are:

 First and second generation immigrants from a different ethnic background on the
waiting list have different tissue characteristics and therefore generally have to
wait longer than native patients. As in many cases the awareness on the benefits of
organ donation in populations of immigrants is low, relatively few donor organs
are available for patients from these populations. Attempts to increase the
awareness on organ donation and to increase the willingness in these populations
to donate organs can help to reduce waiting time for these patients.
 The ethics of allocating organs for transplant poses a classical problem: any criteria
defined to allocate organs efficiently, maximizing utility, can easily lead to
situations perceived as grossly unjust or unfair.

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Opinions about Eurotransplant
I think Eurotransplant is a really good organization because it safes peoples lifes. If this
organization wouldn’t exist it would be really hard to find an organ donor. Although there
is still a really long waitlist it’s easier than in the past. Because of the help of the
organization centres can divide their organs equally. Eurotransplant also does research on
transplantation. They have a lot of data from patients, donors, transplants and the
outcomes of transplantations. They spread this information in the scientific and medical
world. This way more people get more information about it. I think it’s also very
important that a lot of countries work together with Eurotransplant. So every country that
joins Eurotransplant is also very important. With every country there are more donors and
also there is more information and knowledge. I hope more countries will join and also
that more donors will sign in.

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The end
I liked to learn about organ transplant and Eurotransplant, but it was really hard to find
some things on the internet. I mostly used the website of Eurotransplant
(www.eurotransplant.org) to find mine information. I think this is a good source because
it’s from Eurotransplant self. I found out that Eurotransplant does a lot and is very
important for a lot of people.

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