When a patient must undergo organ transplant surgery due to a serious disease of some kind, the patient who is expected to receive the organ is called the "recipient" and the provider is called the "donor".
Donors can be healthy people who donate parts of themselves to people with serious illnesses, as in bone marrow and liver transplants, or they can donate organs after brain death or shortly after death.
Especially in the latter case, a donor is a person who has indicated their willingness to donate their organs after death through a letter that declares their intent or a will written before death in order to confirm the person's wishes.
The following organs can be donated after brain death: heart, lungs, liver, kidney, pancreas, and small intestine; also, the liver, pancreas, and cornea can be transplanted after cardiac arrest.
However, in both cases, the donation of organs is not possible without the consent of the family. In the case of liver and cornea transplants, even if the donor has not left a declaration of intent, they can still donate their organs after death if their family consented to the operation.
When a donor becomes available for transplant surgery, the recipient is selected equitably based on blood type, weight, and urgency of the procedure, and then the transplant is performed as soon as possible.
It may be natural for the recipient to want to know the donor, or for the donor to want to know if the recipient is living well, but the risk that this will create a conflict of interest or some kind of trouble between the two parties, as well as the need to protect the privacy of both, must be taken into consideration. Giving information about the donor and recipient to each other is currently forbidden.
However, there is a growing trend in other countries for donors and recipients to exchange necessary information when both parties wish to do so.
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