WASHINGTON — Sure, your liver or kidney could save someone’s life. But would you donate your hands or your face? Signing up to become an organ donor might get more complicated than just checking a box on your driver’s license.
The government is preparing to regulate the new field of hand and face transplants as it does standard organ transplants, giving more Americans who are disabled or disfigured by injury, illness or combat a chance at this radical kind of reconstruction.
Among the first challenges is deciding how people should consent to donate these very visible body parts that could improve someone’s quality of life — without deterring them from traditional donation of hearts, lungs and other internal organs needed to save lives.
“Joe Blow is not going to know that now an organ is defined as also including a hand or a face,” said Dr. Suzanne McDiarmid, who is chairwoman of the committee of the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, that will develop the policies over the next few months.
Making that clear to potential donors and their families is critical — “otherwise, we could undermine public trust,” said McDiarmid, a transplant specialist at the University of California at Los Angeles.
These “reconstructive transplants” are experimental and rare. The best estimates are that 27 hand transplants have been performed in the U.S. since 1999, and about seven partial or full-face transplants since 2008.
But they’re increasing as more U.S. hospitals offer the complex surgeries, as the Defense Department funds research into the approach for wounded veterans and as transplant recipients go public to say how the surgeries have improved their lives.
