You can donate a kidney, a portion of your liver, a lobe of your lung, part of your pancreas, or part of your intestine while you’re alive. Kidneys are by far the most common living donation, followed by partial liver donations. Lung, pancreas, and intestine donations from living donors are rare but do happen. Beyond solid organs, you can also donate bone marrow and stem cells, blood, and plasma during your lifetime.
Kidney: The Most Common Living Donation
Your body has two kidneys but can function well with one. That’s what makes kidney donation the most straightforward and most frequent type of living organ donation. Most of these surgeries are now done laparoscopically, using small incisions that reduce pain and speed up healing. The donor and recipient typically have their surgeries on the same day.
Recovery is relatively quick. Most kidney donors stay in the hospital about two days, can drive again within two weeks, and return to normal activities in four to six weeks. Lifting restrictions usually last at least six weeks. The remaining kidney gradually compensates for the one that was removed, handling the body’s filtering needs on its own.
Living donor kidneys also perform better for recipients than kidneys from deceased donors. Five-year graft survival for adult recipients aged 18 to 34 is about 89% with a living donor kidney compared to 81% with a deceased donor kidney. For recipients 65 and older, the gap is even wider: 82% versus 68%.
Liver: The Organ That Regrows
A healthy liver can be split, and both halves will regenerate. In living liver donation, surgeons remove either the right or left lobe, depending on the size needed by the recipient. The donor’s remaining liver regrows most rapidly during the first month after surgery, slows down after that, and reaches its final volume by about six months. The transplanted portion regenerates in the recipient on a similar timeline.
Liver donation surgery is more complex than kidney donation and generally involves a longer hospital stay and recovery period. But it fills a critical need: the waitlist for livers is long, and a living donor can schedule the transplant before the recipient’s condition deteriorates further.
Lung, Pancreas, and Intestine
These three organs can be donated by a living person, but such donations are uncommon. Unlike the liver, these organs do not regenerate. The portion you keep and the portion the recipient receives each function on their own, but neither grows back to full size.
In a living lung donation, a donor gives one lobe (your lungs have five lobes total). Living pancreas donation involves removing a segment of the organ, and it’s most often performed for recipients with type 1 diabetes. About 90% of people who receive a kidney-pancreas graft from a living donor have type 1 diabetes as their primary diagnosis. Living intestine donation involves transplanting a section of the small bowel and has been performed primarily for young children with intestinal failure. Living donors account for less than 1% of small bowel transplants in the United States each year.
Because these procedures are rare, they carry less well-established outcome data. Pancreas donors, for example, face a small but real risk of complications like inflammation or infection at the surgical site, reported in under 5% of cases in published case series, though reoperation rates have been noted at 5% to 20% in some reports.
Bone Marrow, Stem Cells, and Blood
Bone marrow and blood stem cell donation is one of the most accessible forms of living donation. Your body continuously produces new marrow and blood cells, so there’s no permanent loss. Bone marrow donation involves collecting marrow from the back of the hip bone under anesthesia. Peripheral blood stem cell donation is less invasive: you receive injections over several days that push stem cells into your bloodstream, and they’re collected through a process similar to giving blood.
Blood and plasma donation are the simplest forms of living donation. Whole blood can be donated every 56 days, and plasma more frequently. Birth tissues like the amniotic membrane, collected after delivery, are another source of living-donated material used in wound healing and reconstructive procedures.
Who Can Be a Living Donor
You must be at least 18 years old and in good overall physical and mental health. There’s no strict upper age limit, but the evaluation process is thorough. It includes a complete physical exam, blood work, imaging scans, cancer screening, urine tests to assess kidney function, and a psychological evaluation. The process can take several days.
Certain conditions will disqualify you: uncontrolled high blood pressure, diabetes, active cancer, HIV or hepatitis, and uncontrolled psychiatric conditions. The specifics vary by transplant center, and some conditions that seem like automatic disqualifiers may be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Your decision to donate must be entirely voluntary, free from pressure or financial coercion.
Long-Term Health Risks for Donors
The most extensive long-term data exists for kidney donors. Overall, donating a kidney is considered safe, but it’s not without measurable effects. Kidney donors develop high blood pressure at slightly higher rates than non-donors. One study matching over 1,200 donors with more than 6,300 controls found that 16.3% of donors were diagnosed with hypertension over an average of six years, compared to 11.9% of controls. Among African American donors, the gap was larger: 40.8% versus 17.9%.
The risk of eventually developing kidney failure yourself is very low in absolute terms but elevated compared to non-donors. Out of more than 96,000 living kidney donors tracked in one U.S. study, 99 developed end-stage kidney disease. That’s roughly 0.1%, but it represents about an eightfold increase in risk compared to similar healthy adults who didn’t donate. As of 2020, the U.S. transplant registry had recorded 633 former living kidney donors, or 0.4% of all tracked donors, who went on to develop kidney failure.
For liver, lung, pancreas, and intestine donors, long-term risk data is thinner simply because these donations happen far less often. The general risks of any major abdominal surgery apply: infection, hernia, blood clots, and the possibility of reduced organ function over time.