No. The recovery of organs is carried out by well-trained surgeons with the greatest care and does not disfigure the body or change the way it looks.

Most of the religious groups support the concept of organ donation. However if you have any doubt you can discuss it with your spiritual or religious leader.

Eyes can be donated for up to 6 hours after death. To be useful kidneys have to be removed within half an hour of death. However both these organs along with others can also be retrieved under different circumstances.

In 1968 doctors in Harvard found that deeply comatose patients who had sustained brain injury, never regained consciousness. Although their heart continued to beat and kept their blood circulation going, these patients were clinically dead. If their breathing support machines were stopped, the heart stopped due to brain death. A new definition of death emerged. As this death was under controlled circumstances (i.e, in the intensive care of hospitals), it was possible to retrieve some of their organs (like Kidneys, heart & Liver) after consent from their relatives. In the West, the transplantation of these organs from brain dead patients is an accepted part of medical treatment. The Govt. of India has also now accepted this new definition of death.

Two different doctors who are not involved with the patient's treatment and who are from a panel of doctors as recommended by the Government and from a different hospital carry out a series of tests to confirm that a patient is "Brain stem dead". The standards are very strict and are accepted medically, legally and ethically all over the world.

Brain death usually results from a severe brain injury or brain haemorrhage which causes all the brain activity to stop. This can happen after a major road accident or a bleeding in the brain due to stroke.

                                           Transplant Facts