Since the early 1950s, when the first organ transplants were made using donated kidneys, medical science has continued to practice and perfect the process of removing and transplanting a variety of human organs. Some of the organs can be taken out of living donors, like kidneys and livers. Human beings only need one kidney to survive, and the liver is capable of regenerating if a section of it is removed. Thus, generous souls with the same blood type can donate these organs to save another’s life, while still living themselves.
Other organs, however, cannot be extracted from one person and placed into another unless the donor is recently deceased. A cadaverous donor can supply the organs that a living donor cannot; organs including, but not limited to human hearts, pancreases, eyes, and skin are all harvested from cadaverous donors. One of the most important organs in the human body is the heart. But how are doctors able to harvest the organ and transplant it into another human being in desperate need of a functioning heart?
The first and most important component of any heart transplantation surgery is a dead body. Once deceased, the body’s organs will rapidly deteriorate unless measures are taken. Human cadavers that are set aside for organ donation are kept on life support to keep their bodies functioning. However, even though their hearts are still beating, that doesn’t mean that they are still alive. The law defines human death as brain death, meaning there is no activity going on in the brain. The body might be alive, but the human being it once contained is technically dead. The cadaverous donor is kept on life support until the organs can be removed as soon as possible.
The surgery to harvest the heart begins with a series of steps. First, the chest is cut open, the ribs are pulled back, and the breastbone is sliced through in order to expose the heart. To stop the heart from beating, the surgical team closes the blood vessels and inserts a chilled, protective chemical solution. This solution keeps the heart preserved during transportation.
The recipient, having already been prepared for surgery during the organ’s transportation, is injected with an anti-coagulant through his IV to keep his blood from clotting. Like the procedure done to the cadaverous donor, the living patient has an incision made in his chest. The doctors will saw through his breastbone and have his rib cage pulled back to reveal the place they’ll be operating. After these steps are taken, the patient is hooked up to a heart-lung machine, which takes on the function of the patient’s heart and lungs during the surgery. The machine, which draws the patient’s blood into its many chambers, inserts oxygen into the bloodstream and removes carbon dioxide. It is also is set to cool down the blood during the operation in order to protect the other organs.
The medical team removes the diseased heart by slicing it loose from the attached blood vessels, leaving only the upper chambers of the old heart (the atria) in place. The donor heart’s atria are removed and the new heart and the old atria are sewn (or sutured) together in the chest. The doctors then reattach the old blood vessels to the new heart.
The heart-lung machine, having cooled down the blood, is set to gradually warm it back up again so that the new heart will start beating without assistance from the medical team. Once the doctors are certain that the heart is working properly, they wire the breastbone back together and put the ribs in place. The doctors sew the patient’s chest together using dissolving stitches (stitches that naturally decompose in the person’s body, without requiring a doctor to remove them). The patient is given a week to recover. The surgery takes about five hours.
The surgery described is written having occurred under the best possible circumstances. Although medical science has been doing heart transplants for many years, complications may still occur during the surgery. Despite the risks, however, organ transplants are still an excellent technique used to add many years to a person who, fifty years ago, may never have had the chance to live otherwise.1
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Bibliography3
"History of Heart Transplantation." Cambridge and Oxford Heart Transplantation Foundation. 4
23 Nov. 2004 .5
Harris, Tom. "How Organ Transplants Work." How Stuff Works. 23 Nov. 20046
< http://health.howstuffworks.com/organ-transplant.htm>.7
"During the Transplant: Heart." 10 Oct 2003. Transplant Living. United Network for Organ8
Sharing. 23 Nov. 2004 .9
Grayson, Charlotte E. "Heart Disease: Heart Transplantation Treatment." Jun 2004. WebMD
Health. 23 Nov. 2004 .
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Author notes
Hey Black Olives!
I'm not sure if this is what you were looking for - an actual assignment I had to do - but I think that's what option one was for. If I misinterpreted this, SORRY! I'll remove it (or you can feel free to disqualify)
Why I hated this assignment:
I had to write this for Technical and Scientific Writing. Now, I am a creative writer. I like to write long, introverted fiction with all sorts of pretty similes and metaphors and extraneous, poetic language.
Unfortunately, my major required that I take Tech and Sci writing, so I had to suffer through the class.
Now, I don't know if you've ever tried to write in a technical style, but that is a HARD thing to do if you're just used to being creative. You can't use ANY extraneous language. You can't use ornate adjectives or metaphors. Nope, none of that fun stuff.
Instead, technical writing is all about the specificity. The clarity. The explanation or message is more important than the art of writing.
I hated it and I had a really. hard. time. with it.
It took me FOUR HOURS to write this stupid, two-page essay. FOUR HOURS! I can churn out a TEN PAGE PAPER in three hours for any other class, but this one? Ugh.
The assignment was that we had to explain a scientific technique in clear enough language that readers of a Lady's Home Journal would understand the process. So I wrote about heart transplants, because at least they're a gory (woo! blood and guts!).
Despite how much I hated the assignment, however, I got an 'A'! Woo!
And there's my story.
A contest entry
- GAH! homework w/options by DemApples.
253 points, ended April 22, 2007, 3 entries
Gold trophy winner
• next story in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
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I totally agree with your assessment of technical writing. I also took a tech writing class in college and it was a struggle. We had to write technology manuals and such. The problem is that it had to be dumbed down for the lay person, or as is said in the movie Blazing Saddles, "People of the land, you know, morons!"
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this is right on the money
this is exactly what i was looking fo i have never had to write in a tech style but i do know how hard it is to write outside your traditional prefrence i like this because i lkearned something and i have a question for you.. Why is the right ventricle bigger than the left? an A is good but four hours for two pages yikes X.X dies
beginning: 5, language: 5, plot: 5, ending: 5, dialog: 5, characters: 5.
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oh!
And thanks for the gold trophy! Woo!
*happiness* -
answer
Sometimes when you have heart disease, one of the signs is that the right or left ventricle is enlarged.
One example of a particular type of heart disease is Cardiomegaly, which happens when the heart gives out a lower output (also known as 'cardiac failure'). Cardiomegaly's most obvious symptom is that the heart itself grows 50% bigger.
One bad side of researching medical crap is how I get totally creeped out by it. I have this theory that hypochondriacs (people who think that they're sick when they're perfectly healthy) are just would-be doctors who couldn't handle the creepiness of the material.
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