I’d think it would much more difficult to put an organ in than take one out. Also, I assume the donor is quite healthy, while the recipient is very much not so (needing an organ and all).
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The person needing an organ has a bad organ. So they are going from near death to a surgery that gives them a functional organ. Win!
The person donating the organ is healthy. So they are going from having a functioning system to suddenly surgery and a damaged organ/system. Ouch.
Both have surgery. So that’s equal. But one gets an improved organ and the other now needs to recover from losing some of their organ.
What kind of organ transplantations do you have in mind? There are only very few organs which can be translated from a live donor without the donor dying (mostly a kidney and part of the liver).
All other organs are taken from braindead bodies, where it doesn’t really matter how bad the surgery is for the donor (as they are already dead).
No standard transplant surgeries are typically harder on the donor than the recipient. There’s always some luck, including bad luck, but there’s no surgery that’s started with the expectation that the recipient will bounce right back but the donor will have a terrible time.
Most organs are from deceased donors. Of living donor transplants, most are kidney transplants. The kidneys sit deep at the back of the abdomen, and the surgery to remove one is pretty invasive. The recipient has a simpler surgery. The donated kidney is transplanted into the groin and connected to the blood vessels there. Their own two kidneys are left untouched.
There aren’t many organs that could be taken from a living donor: kidney being one, and a partial liver transplant being the other.
To remove a kidney from a donor requires actual surgery into the abdominal cavity or the retroperitoneal cavity. There are a lot of potentially very important structures a surgeon will have to avoid and identify in order to get sufficient space to get the kidney out with all the attached vessels and structures.
On the other hand putting a kidney in does not require entering the belly: a transplanted kidney is placed near the groin. There are certainly important things that have to be identified but not to the same degree of danger as organ removal.
As a kidney donor and a friend of someone who received a kidney (unrelated donations).
Me as a donor I was out for 6 weeks. With after 4 weeks being able to do social stuff again.
My friend who received it seemed more healthy. However, he came from a way worse place. Our timelines kind of matched up in terms of recovery. However, the recipient is still on medicine and such while I was completely fine.
After donating you basically only get pain meds and some stuff to help you deal with the pain meds. While someone who receives it gets anti rejection stuff and I don’t know what else. We compared our scars and mine are definitely way smaller and less obvious than his
Some extra info. It’s been about 5 years after my donation, I have no real things I have to change in my life. The most impactful is that I shouldn’t get ibuprofen or any of the NSAIDS. But there are plenty of alternatives!
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