What is organ procurement?
To understand the rest of this Blog, one must first familiarize him or herself with some industry lingo. This post aims to offer a little clarification on just what exactly is Organ Procurement.
Organ procurement, often (archaically) referred to as an organ harvest, is the physical act of removing organs from a donor for the purposes of transplantation. These organ procurement teams are made up of surgeons, surgical assistants, and organ preservationists. Different hospital systems have different programs; some only offer thoracic (heart and lung) transplants, and others have abdominal (liver, kidney, intestine, pancreas, uterus) transplant programs, or any combination of the different organs.
Organ Procurement Team Types:
Traditionally, these teams are made up of staff from a hospital with an organ transplant program, however, with the pandemic came many changes in the way the world operates. During the pandemic, transplant centers started using “local procurement” rather than sending their own teams. This was mainly due to travel restrictions, vaccine requirements, etc. This meant that a surgeon that was certified to procure a specific organ near the donor site would go and do the procurement and send the organ on a plane unaccompanied to the recipient location. *note: Unaccompanied in this sense is not as one would imagine, a lonely organ being bounced around in the cold underbelly cargo hold of a 737 , but rather by itself, strapped into one of the comfortable seats on a well appointed private jet with the company of the professional pilots and being hand delivered every step of the way.
Nearing the *end* of the pandemic, a new wave of procurement teams came about, this being the “3rd party procurement team”. These 3rd party teams consist of the exact same team members as stated earlier in this post, however they may not be employees of the hospital system in which the organ will be transplanted. For example, a surgeon from “X University Hospitals” and a surgical assistant employed by “Y Clinic” may team up to go on a procurement run to procure and bring an organ to “Z Hospitals Systems” to be put into an eagerly awaiting recipient.
Which type of procurement team do I work for?
I am a part of a 3rd party procurement team, working as a surgical assistant and organ preservationist on behalf of some of the finest and most prestigious hospital systems in the country. We have contracts with hospitals across the United States that allow them to contact us and say “Hey, we accepted a heart out of Kentucky for our recipient in Georgia, can your team go get it for us?” – The answer is always “Yes, we would LOVE to!”
Which is where the logistical symphony begins… more on that to come.
Follow my team and I as we procure, transport, and hand deliver the ultimate gift, the gift of Life!
