After a medical degree Malaysia, performing an organ transplant might be one of your tasks in your future as a medical practitioner if your job actually involves performing surgeries. One day you have to replace a diseased part of a kidney with a new kidney tissue.
Next month, somebody’s heart valve needs to be replaced with a mammal’s, like a cow or pig. It may sound unusual for first timers, but it does happen when human heart valves aren’t available at the moment.
There are several types of organ transplants that are performed today, some which you may commonly find or hear about.
Allotransplantation
Whenever you hear anything about organ transplants, this type of process will likely be your first imagery that comes to mind. Allotransplantation is a transplant between two genetically unrelated people. Donor organs and tissues mostly come from living people or those that died of a significant brain injury or lack of circulation.
The downside with allotransplantation is that your immune system will attack or destroy a transplanted organ because it perceives it as a foreign threat. Therefore immunosuppressants and other prescribed medicines must be taken as instructed by the doctor to reduce the risk of rejection of the donated organ. Your doctor will also advise you on how often you need to visit the hospital or clinic and what to avoid in your daily life.
For some transplants like bone marrow, a graft versus host disease, or GvHD, could be possibly introduced when immune cells of the donated marrow see your body as foreign and attack your cells. Doctors can take measures to reduce the risk of GvHD.
An isograft is what happens when you are receiving an organ or a part of it from your twin sibling. Immunosuppressants are not needed since your body will almost never reject this type of transplant.
Autograft
If you are wondering whether it is possible to transplant a part of yourself to your diseased tissue, it is. The procedure of transplanting one part of your body to another is called an autograft. Skin, bone marrow, bone and blood vessels are examples of organs that can be part of the autograft process.
Skin grafts use a part of your healthy skin to heal a wound or burn on another part of your body. For blood vessels, an alternative route for vessels to carry on while bypassing a blocked artery is provided. A heart bypass surgery is an example of this.
Bone grafts are carried out to reconstruct a damaged area of your body. A spinal fusion is a good example. Meanwhile, a bone marrow graft is performed when, for instance, you have cancer and bone marrow is collected prior to chemotherapy. Your blood stem cells would be replaced later after high-dose chemotherapy.
Autografts do not carry the risk of rejection by immune cells since the transplanted organs are your own to begin with. Still, the collection of that new tissue creates a wound on its former spot, which you need to recover from. At least you can now survive with that new tissue.