No! Medical and nursing care are not affected in any way by your status as a registered donor. Every attempt is made to save your life.

In most cases resulting in organ donation, the patient has suffered a traumatic brain injury and brain death. After all life-saving efforts have been exhausted and it is determined that the patient’s death is imminent, the patient must remain on ventilator support. The reason for this is that the heart and lungs must continue to function after the patient dies so that the transplantable organs continue to function. In some cases of irrecoverable injury to the brain, if the patient’s heart stops beating, some organs may be recovered quickly for transplantation.

Virtually all deceased persons, regardless of cause of death, may potentially be tissue or eye donors. Unlike organ donation, it is not necessary for heart and lung function to be maintained on a ventilator. Once a death is reported to the local recovery agency, protocols require that the family be contacted within a few hours regarding the opportunity to donate. This request comes at a time during the family’s grief, but it is done only in the interest of honoring the wishes of the potential donor and helping those in need of donated tissue and eyes. For people who choose to enroll in the Mississippi Donor Registry, their family is spared the added burden of deciding what to do. All that is required of the family at that point is to answer some questions about current medical history.

People with these injuries receive the most aggressive care available in the hospital. If it becomes clear that a patient is not surviving the brain injury, however, the OPO can search for their name in the Mississippi Donor Registry. If the patient has registered as a donor, his or her wishes will be followed, and the family will be asked to provide a current medical history. If the patient has not registered as a donor, a donation counselor will give the family information about donation and allow them to make the donation decisions for the patient. This is a great advantage in making a decision to join the Mississippi Donor Registry--- to avoid leaving your family with a difficult decision at a traumatic time.

Once death has been declared and authorization is received through the donor registry (or from the family in lieu of a registration), medical professionals must conduct tests to determine whether the patient is suitable to be a donor. Blood tests and other standard medical procedures determine the patient’s blood type, kidney and liver function, exposure to transmittable diseases, and tissue typing for the purpose of matching kidneys to recipients. These tests are medically necessary in order to save as many lives as possible.