One donor can save 8 lives and enhance the lives of 75 more.
The list of organs and tissues that you can donate continues to grow. You can save up to eight lives and improve over 75 more.
Most often, you donate organs once you’ve died. You can donate some organs while you’re alive.
What organs can I donate after I die?
- Kidneys (2)
- Liver
- Lungs (2)
- Heart
- Pancreas
- Intestines
- Hands and Face
Get answers to your questions about donating after death.
What organs can I donate while I’m alive?
- One kidney
- One lung
- A part of the liver
- A part of the pancreas
- A part of the intestine
Get answers to your questions about living organ donation.
When you register as an organ, eye, and tissue donor, you can help give someone the gift of sight through cornea donation.
- The cornea is the clear, dome-shaped tissue at the front of the eye. It helps focus light so you can see clearly. Disease, injury, or other conditions can damage the cornea and affect a person's vision.
- During a corneal transplant, doctors replace damaged corneal tissue with donated tissue—not an entire eye. A corneal transplant can help improve or restore vision.
- In 2025, U.S. eye banks supplied tissue for more than 52,000 corneal transplants performed in the United States.
- Age, eye color, blood type, and the quality of your eyesight do not automatically prevent you from becoming a cornea donor. Medical professionals evaluate medical history and other factors to determine whether donated tissue is suitable for transplantation.
If you want to become an eye, organ, and tissue donor, register your decision and talk with your family and loved ones about your wishes.
Get more facts about cornea donation from the Eye Bank Association of America.
Donated tissues enhance the quality of life for the people who receive them. Each year, about 30,000 donors provide tissue.
The hospital, medical examiner, or funeral home notifies the local tissue bank. The American Association of Tissue Banks can help you understand tissue banks better.
Doctors must take out the tissue within 24 hours after death. But tissue banks can store the tissue for a long time.
What can tissue banks store?
- Corneas
- The middle ear
- Skin
- Heart valves
- Bone
- Veins
- Cartilage
- Tendons
- Ligaments
Doctors use these to restore sight, cover burns, repair hearts, replace veins, and mend damaged connective tissue and cartilage.
These are difficult surgeries. They call them vascularized composite allograft (VCA) organ transplants.
Doctors move (“graft”) tissue. This can include bone, muscle, nerves, skin, and blood vessels.
- 2005: First hand transplant
- 2007: First face transplant
Anti-rejection drugs help the people who receive them to keep the transplants.
As of January 2018, there have been fewer than 200 VCA organ transplants around the world.
If you’re healthy and between age 18 and 60, you can donate blood stem cells.
It’s best when the donor and the receiving patient’s tissue type or human leukocyte antigen (HLA) match.
It’s easier to find a match in the same family or in the same racial or ethnic group.
What are the three sources of blood stem cells?
- Bone marrow: This soft tissue is inside your bones. It produces many blood cells. Doctors remove it to get stem cells.
- Cord blood stem cells: The blood in the cord that connects a newborn to the mother during pregnancy has high levels of blood stem cells. Doctors can collect and store these in freezers for a long time.
- Peripheral blood stem cells: You can get daily injections of a drug called filgrastim. The drug increases the number of stem cells in the blood. It helps push out the same types of stem cells found in marrow. Doctors can collect this in the same way as when you donate blood.
Your body makes blood and platelets. You replace these repeatedly throughout your life. This means that you can donate blood and platelets more than once.
It’s safe to donate blood every 56 days and platelets every four weeks.
How do they store blood?
Blood banks store blood by type (A, B, AB, or O) and Rh factor (positive or negative).
How do doctors use blood?
Blood had different lifesaving uses. Doctors can use it whole or they can separate it into packed red cells, plasma, and platelets.
How long does it take to donate blood?
It only takes about 10 minutes to collect one pint of blood. The entire process takes about an hour because they need to test and screen your blood.
What are platelets?
Platelets are tiny parts of cells. They move around in the blood and help blood clot.
How can I donate platelets?
You can donate platelets without donating blood. A patient may need platelets but not blood.
Doctors separate platelets from the rest of the blood. Then they return the blood to you. Your body will replace the missing platelets in a few hours.
Do you want to donate blood, blood stem cells, or platelets?
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