Living Donors Faces Ethical Concerns for Hand and Face Transplant

Organ transplants like the hand and face are vascularized composite allografts or VCAs. The face and hand are vital organs to express ourselves among other daily activities. Despite that, these transplants can be considered life-altering rather than a life-saving procedure. They are different from solid organ transplants in the best liver transplant hospital.

Surgical progress makes face and hand transplants viable for patients of military warfare, accidents, and machine crush injuries. However, in the wake of technological and medical advances, significant ethical concerns arise.

History of Hand and Face Transplants

The transplant of a leg in the third century was transformed into medical reality when the first successful transplantation of a hand was achieved in France in 1998. The same team in France performed the first successful face transplantation in 2005. These are not similar procedures to what happens in the top liver transplant hospital in India.

Since then, ten patients faced allotransplantations have been accomplished in China, France, Spain, and the United States. As a consequence, two patients are deceased due to infection and tissue rejection. Now the big question is if the benefit is worth the danger.

The dilemma is whether you should use prosthetic devices. But, they do not repair the sense of temperature or touch. They also do not render a complete range of motion. These disfigurements of the face and hand are not just cosmetic defects. They are different from what occurs in the best liver transplant hospital. On the other hand, plastic surgeons consider the risks of lifelong immunosuppression which include malignancy, infection, and end-organ toxicity.

Ethical Concerns for the Living Donor:

• The surgery is still considered experimental as it is conducted under research protocols. Thus, the major ethical problem is the use of humans as a research subject in a clinical study.  
• According to an article from “Journal of Medical Ethics” in 2015, the motivation of the donor along with the anonymity of the said donor are matters of concern. Also, it is observed that whether the donor’s family identifies the face and wants to meet with the recipient. 
• The problem of identity has been raised too. There have been speculations that a face transplant indicates that people with disfiguring circumstances cannot live a quality life. 
• These are very different predicaments to what happens in the top liver transplant hospital in India. Whereas there is information about liver transplants, there are few facts on the face and hand transplantation. Even less information can be found with the living donors. The results are unknown since the last transplant was when a woman donated her uterus to her friend. There were few instances before this with identical twins. In these cases, the tissue within the stomach was donated to rebuild the scalp, and the tissue of abdominal walls was donated to rebuild the breast after mastectomy. 

Addressing the Ethical Concerns:

If we look at the kidney donors or liver donors in the best liver transplant hospital, we would see that most of them are living their lives just fine. However, some donors do not fare so well after surgery. For instance, some living donors have experienced PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder, more pain than they expected, or were not well taken care of by the health providers even after accomplishing such a generous act. Now, the big question is how VCA living donors process all of these if that is the case with living kidney donors since 1988 in the United States. This is not the case we see in the top liver transplant hospital in India.

Eventually, you have to choose the medical facilities that suit your interest. However, a potential living donor cannot make a well-informed decision as there is little data about the recipient and donor outcomes. Studies have displayed that many living donors choose to donate, relying on their emotional relationship with the recipient. It’s like entering a situation without any knowledge. For example, if you want to donate a long-bone tissue, you should know about other living donors with long-bone tissue and whether or not they faced any disfigurement or difficulties after the transplant procedure.

We need data of pioneer cases to learn from, and we also need other types of research to know whether the living donor will live a quality life after the donation. To improve the consent process and ensure that the donors make well-informed choices, it is significant to find out the required information you would need about VCA donation. Until the information can be achieved and VCA donation is not regarded as experimental anymore, the safety of the living donor should be one of the vital priorities along with the patient.

Finally, when and why should living donors donate without any VCA policy in place? The answer lies in the emotional bond between the recipient and donor. It is nothing like the occurrences in the best liver transplant hospital. However, there are still consent policies and human connections to think about.