Organ donation is the process when a person allows an organ of their own to be removed and transplanted to another person, legally, either by consent while the donor is alive or dead with the assent of the next of kin. Donation may be for research or, more commonly, healthy transplantable organs and tissues may be donated to be transplanted into another person.Common transplantations include kidneys, heart, liver, pancreas, intestines, lungs, bones, bone marrow, skin, and corneas. Some organs and tissues can be donated by living donors, such as a kidney or part of the liver, part of the pancreas, part of the lungs or part of the intestines, but most donations occur after the donor has died.In 2019, Spain had the highest donor rate in the world at 46.91 per million people, followed by the US (36.88 per million), Croatia (34.63 per million), Portugal (33.8 per million), and France (33.25 per million).As of February 2, 2019, there were 120,000 people waiting for life-saving organ transplants in the US. Of these, 74,897 people were active candidates waiting for a donor. While views of organ donation are positive, there is a large gap between the numbers of registered donors compared to those awaiting organ donations on a global level.To increase the number of organ donors, especially among underrepresented populations, current approaches include the use of optimized social network interventions, exposing tailored educational content about organ donation to target social media users.
In some conditions, blood clots form in one part of the circulatory system and then dislodge and travel to another part of the body, which could include the spleen. These emboligenic disorders include atrial fibrillation, patent foramen ovale, endocarditis or cholesterol embolism. Splenic infarction is also more common in hematological disorders with associated splenomegaly, such as the myeloproliferative disorders. Other causes of splenomegaly (for example, Gaucher disease or hemoglobinopathies) can also predispose to infarction. Splenic infarction can also result from a sickle cell crisis in patients with sickle cell anemia. Both splenomegaly and a tendency towards clot formation feature in this condition. In sickle cell disease, repeated splenic infarctions lead to a non-functional spleen (autosplenectomy). Any factor that directly compromises the splenic artery can cause infarction. Examples include abdominal traumas, aortic dissection, torsion of the splenic artery (for example, in wandering spleen) or external compression on the artery by a tumor. It can also be a complication of vascular procedures.Splenic infarction can be due to vasculitis or disseminated intravascular coagulation. Various other conditions have been associated with splenic infarction in case reports, for example granulomatosis with polyangiitis or treatment with medications that predispose to vasospasm or blood clot formation, such as vasoconstrictors used to treat esophageal varices, sumatriptan or bevacizumab.In a single-center retrospective cases review, people who were admitted to the hospital with a confirmed diagnosis of acute splenic infarction, cardiogenic emboli was the dominant etiology followed by atrial fibrillation, autoimmune disease, associated infection, and hematological malignancy.