Living Donation

Inter­est­ed in being a liv­ing donor?

If you are con­sid­er­ing being a liv­ing organ donor, it’s impor­tant to edu­cate your­self about the dona­tion process, required test­ing, finan­cial con­sid­er­a­tions, risks, and recov­ery. For more infor­ma­tion on liv­ing dona­tion, please vis­it Trans­plant Liv­ing.

What is liv­ing donation?

Liv­ing dona­tion is an alter­na­tive type of dona­tion for indi­vid­u­als await­ing an organ trans­plant from a deceased donor. Liv­ing dona­tion takes place when a liv­ing per­son donates an organ or part of an organ for trans­plan­ta­tion to anoth­er person. 

Liv­ing dona­tion usu­al­ly involves a sin­gle kid­ney, a seg­ment of the liv­er, the lobe of one lung, a por­tion of the pan­creas or a por­tion of the intestine. 

There are sev­er­al types of liv­ing donation:

Relat­ed liv­ing donation

Relat­ed liv­ing dona­tion involves the dona­tion of an organ or a part of an organ from one blood-relat­ed fam­i­ly mem­ber to anoth­er. Donors may be sib­lings, par­ents, or oth­er blood rel­a­tives such as aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. 

Non-relat­ed liv­ing donation

Non-relat­ed liv­ing dona­tion involves the dona­tion of an organ or part of an organ from an emo­tion­al­ly close but non-blood relat­ed per­son to anoth­er. Donors may be spous­es, in-law rel­a­tives, close friends, co-work­ers, neigh­bors, or oth­er acquain­tances to the recipient. 

Non-direct­ed donation

Non-direct­ed dona­tion involves liv­ing donors who are not relat­ed to or known by the recip­i­ent, but make their dona­tion pure­ly out of self­less motives. This is also referred to as anony­mous, altru­is­tic, and stranger-to-stranger liv­ing donation.

Paired exchange donation

Paired exchange dona­tion con­sists of two kid­ney donor/​recipient pairs whose blood types are not com­pat­i­ble. The two recip­i­ents trade donors so that each recip­i­ent can receive a kid­ney with a com­pat­i­ble blood type. Once the eval­u­a­tions of all donors and recip­i­ents are com­plet­ed, the two kid­ney trans­plant oper­a­tions are sched­uled to occur simultaneously. 

Leg­is­la­tion

Fed­er­al Legislation 

Fed­er­al employ­ees receive 30 days paid leave for organ dona­tion, in addi­tion to their sick and annu­al leave (HR 457). 

State Tax Deductions/​Credits

HF 801, authored by Rep. James Van Fos­sen on 5/12/05, allows liv­ing organ donors to deduct as much as $10,000 on their state income tax­es for trav­el, lodg­ing and lost wages relat­ed to the donation.

Donor Leave Laws

HB 381, enact­ed 8/28/03, pro­vides up to 30 work­days of leave for vas­cu­lar organ dona­tion by state employees. 

If you are inter­est­ed in being a liv­ing donor and know some­one whom you would like to donate to, you should con­tact their trans­plant cen­ter. If you are inter­est­ed in non-direct­ed dona­tion, you can con­tact one of the three trans­plant cen­ters in Iowa. For con­tact infor­ma­tion, please click here. Please also share with us your deci­sion to be a liv­ing donor. We would love to hear from you!