In the near future donating your face could be just as standard as your kidney.
The government plans to start regulation hand and face transplants in a similar fashion to other more standard donations; they hope this will provide solutions for more disabled Americans, the Associated Press reported.
The first matter at hand is how to encourage people to donate these unconventional body parts without taking the attention away from other important donations such as the heart and lungs.
"Joe Blow is not going to know that now an organ is defined as also including a hand or a face," Suzanne McDiarmid, who chairs the committee of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) that is working on the new system, told the AP.
The researchers believe it is crucial that donors understand that hands and faces will now be classified under (organs).
"The consent process for the life-saving organs should not, must not, be derailed by a consent process for a different kind of organ, that the public might think of as being very different from donating a kidney or a heart or a liver," McDiarmid said.
Several hand transplants have had to be amputates and two people have died outside of the U.S. after receiving a face transplant. Patients who have received these procedures must take anti-rejection medications for the rest of their lives, which can increase the risk of cancer and other illnesses.
These types of visible transplants have not been commonly seen in the U.S.; since 1999 there have only been about 27 hand transplants.Only seven face transplants have been performed since 2008, the AP reported.
As of right now whether or not a patient should recieve one of the rare transplants is looked at on a "case-by-case" basis. The new system would add recipients to the UNOS network, and they would try to find the best match in terms of factors such as race and age.
The new definition of organ could also include body parts such as "feet to voice boxes, maybe even the uterus," the AP reported.
