Quick Facts

- Livers are the only organs that regenerate. A living donor's remaining kidney will hypertrophy, but will never regain pre-donation kidney function. 

- It is illegal in the U.S. to accept payment of any kind for an organ. However, NOTA 1984 states that reasonable payments for expenses related to travel, wages lost and housing incurred during living donation is permissible. 

- Living donor organ donations make up approximately 38% of all transplanted organs in the U.S.

- A person must be over the age of 21 in the United States to donate an organ.

- Hospitals/transplant centers charge $400,000 - $500,000 for liver transplant surgery.(64)

- Studies have shown that up to 40% of living donors do not have health insurance. Consequently, they skip out on follow-up care, and will not see a physician when they experience a complication or problem due to the transplant. Consequently, complications from living donation are severely underreported.

- A 2004 World Transplant Consortium admitted that some physicians will not report a medical issue as a consequence of living donorship out of fear of retribution for the donor from their insurance company.

- There is no law in the U.S. preventing insurance companies from denying coverage based on living donation.** They consider the procedure 'elective' and the lack of a kidney a 'pre-existing condition'. NY Attorney General released the following statement allowing insurance companies to deny coverage to living donors in 2008.

-The shortage of organs is so prevalent, some people have turned to posting ads on CraigsList or other donor matching websites (including paired exchanges) for a living donor.

A survey published in 2007 in the American Journal of Transplantation found that only 30% of transplant programs will evaluate publicly solicited donors due to their controversial nature.

Another report stipulates that only 10% of transplant centers will consider a kidney from a donor that is not related or known by the recipient.

**Source: Insurability of Living Organ Donors: A Systematic Review. R. C. Yang, et al. American Journal of Transplantation (2007) 7:6, 1542-1551.

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