Why is it impossible to transplant a bladder? It seems strange to me that a heart can be transplanted and a bladder can’t.
In: Biology
There are risks associated with any organ transplants. There is a risk of rejection and the patient usually have to stay on medication for the rest of their lives, and these medications compromises their immune system making them more likely to die from infections. So when it can be avoided we tend to avoid organ transplants. For simple organs like bones and indeed the urine bladder, it is much easier to repair it then to replace it.
The procedure of adding an external bladder works great so there have not been much research into alternatives. We tend to spend money researching deadly things rather then inconvenient things. But there is some research into artificial internal bladder as well. It actually turns out the intestines are very similar to the bladder so we can graft parts of the intestines to repair the bladder. We are also looking at other artificial materials.
The other commenter gave a good explanation so I’ll just provide some other insight about organs and transplant.
The bladder has incredibly complex wiring. Whenever you want to pee, there has to be a talk between the wiring in your body that you consciously control and the wiring in your body that you can’t consciously control. These different systems have a variety of receptors that then have to work in coordination to relax certain muscles and contract other muscles. This is much different from a lot of other systems in our bodies which are (for the most part) controlled by one wiring system or the other. Pooping is similar in that there is an automatic and voluntary aspect to it. This is why people who have neurologic damage or conditions will often have difficulty urinating or pooping even after recovery of other systems.
When you remove an organ you take all of its blood supply and nerves (wiring) with it. If you wanted to transplant a bladder you would have to rehook this complex wiring back together so the brain could then tell the new bladder when it wants to pee and when it doesn’t.
With other organs, wiring is not as much of an issue because the these organs work (for lack of a better term) by themselves or via processes that don’t require reconnecting the wires. The heart for example does not need input from the brain to pump, it will beat by itself. And if we need it to pump faster or slower, we can put in a device to make it do that.
That is a very simplistic way of explaining these complex physiological processes, but I hope that helps provide context.
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