Selling kidneys to buy mobile phones is not outdated today, and you may remember that when smartphones first emerged ten years ago, the iPhone 4 came out of nowhere, and the price was high in time, but it did not prevent people from going crazy for it. Xiao Wang, the protagonist of "selling kidneys to buy apples", was still in high school that year, and his desire for "apple fever" and poor living expenses prompted him to have the idea of selling one of his kidneys through a black intermediary. "One kidney is enough for me, why need another?" Why not sell it? So, it was taken to Chenzhou by a black agent he met online to undergo nine hours of surgery, and he bought an iPhone4 and an iPad as he wished with the money from the sale of his right kidney.
Ten years later, when the media reporter found the party Xiao Wang again, he had changed from a vigorous teenager to a patient who needed to take medicine for life and rely on his family to take care of him, with a height of only about 120 pounds, due to the poor environment of kidney extraction surgery at that time, the wound infection was caused afterwards, and the only remaining left kidney had been seriously damaged, reaching the level of 3 disability. At the beginning, Xiao Wang's idea of selling a kidney deeply affected his entire life trajectory after that. Ten years later, an iPhone 4 only needs a few tens of yuan on second-hand e-commerce websites, but Xiao Wang's lost health and bleak future cannot be changed no matter how much he pays.
There is also a very concerned question on a certain point: "Uncle has been begging me to donate a kidney to his son, will one kidney really not affect my future labor force?" ”
We are born with two kidneys, is the absence of one really harmless to our body? Today, Dr. Qi will talk to you about this problem.
First of all, we need to know in which cases the kidneys will leave you:
Image source: Stand Cool Helo
(a) You "sold" it
First of all, it should be emphasized that the purchase and sale of organs is a criminal act! Buying and selling organs is a criminal offense! Buying and selling organs is a criminal offense!
The Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China provides: Article 234-1 [Crime of Organizing the Sale of Human Organs] Whoever organizes another person to sell human organs shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than five years and shall also be fined; Whoever, without his or her consent, harvests the organs of a person under the age of 18, or forces or deceives others to donate organs, shall be convicted and punished in accordance with the provisions of Articles 234 and 232 of this Law. Whoever harvests his cadaver organs against his or her own wishes before his or her lifetime, or who does not express his consent before his or her lifetime, violates State regulations, or harvests his cadaveric organs against the will of his close relatives, shall be convicted and punished in accordance with the provisions of Article 302 of this Law.
For whatever reason, trafficking in or purchasing organs, or participating in the trade in organs, is a serious offence. In addition, because the black market for the sale and purchase of organs does not have a good sanitary environment, the places where organ removal and transplantation are carried out cannot reach the sterile environment required for surgery, and many criminals who perform surgery do not have the corresponding medical expertise and practicing physician qualifications, it is easy to cause unpredictable accidents during surgery and complications such as postoperative wound infection, resulting in more unimaginable consequences [1]. Therefore, don't do such a stupid thing that violates the law and hurts your body.
(2) The kidneys become "bad"
For example, kidney cancer, hydronephrosis caused by long-term urinary stones, etc., may lead to having to surgically remove the kidney.
Let's take kidney cancer as an example, many people still talk about cancer discoloration today, think that cancer is an incurable disease, and if you have kidney cancer, you have to remove the diseased kidney, but is this really the case?
Kidney cancer is one of the common malignant tumors in adults, and according to the latest research, the new cases of kidney cancer in the United States rank 6th among all malignancies in the male population and 9th among women [3]. According to the National Cancer Prevention and Control Research Office and the Health Statistics Center of the Ministry of Health, the incidence and death of tumors in pilot cities and counties in the mainland show that the incidence of kidney cancer in the mainland is increasing year by year, and by 2008 it has become the 10th in the incidence of malignant tumors in men in the mainland. So far, the cause of kidney cancer is unknown. Factors that have been identified as those associated with the incidence of kidney cancer include genetics, smoking, obesity, hypertension and antihypertensive therapy.
Although the incidence of kidney cancer has always been high, due to everyone's emphasis on physical examination, more and more kidney cancer patients are still in the early or middle stages of kidney cancer when they are found, and good results can be achieved through surgery. And due to the advancement of medical technology, minimally invasive surgery such as laparoscopic surgery and da Vinci robotic surgery can better retain normal kidney tissue while removing tumors, and because the incision is smaller, the patient's postoperative recovery is faster.
And this is also one of the challenges in the clinical trial of all urological surgeons like Dr. Qi, how to find ways to "remove tumors and protect kidneys" for patients.
(3) "Kidney donation"
This is easy to understand, and everyone often sees it in the news, and donates one of their kidneys to people in need, usually, this person in need is your bone relative.
Then let's return to a certain question: Uncle has been begging me to donate a kidney to his son, will one kidney really not affect my future labor force?
Generally speaking, as long as there is hesitation, hesitation, and going online to seek everyone's opinions, it is recommended not to donate. Truly out of affection, donations must be duty-bound.
This is love, so what about reason? Does it really matter if the human body is missing a kidney?
Under normal circumstances, each kidney of a healthy human body has about one million kidney units, two kidneys is two million, in fact, only eight hundred thousand kidney units are maintaining the normal life activities of the body every day, at first glance, people will feel that "one kidney can maintain life activities, and I donate one and it doesn't have much impact on me." ”
But the kidneys are different from the cells on other body tissues that can constantly multiply and divide, producing new cells, and the kidney units can no longer multiply and divide, that is, the kidney units in your body will almost only decrease, not increase. Moreover, the kidney unit will also "shift" alternately assume the function of the body, and the extra kidney unit is not "useless". As you get older, all the functions of the body will decline, and so will the kidneys, and at that time, maybe the number of kidney units will not be as optimistic as when you were young, and your natural body will not be as good as it was then. Especially when the only remaining kidney is threatened by factors such as kidney cancer, nephritis, trauma, etc., you have no way back.
In addition to human sophistication, this year's American study "Kidney transplantation in adults: Risk of living kidney donation" investigated the living conditions of organ donors after donation, and the results showed that they were not as optimistic as we thought:
Kidney donor complications can be divided into perioperative period (the period around surgical preparation, including the period of preoperative preparation and the period after surgery) and the risks that may occur many years after kidney donation. The perioperative mortality rate at 90 days after living nephrectomy was 1 in 3000. In addition to death, the most important perioperative risks of donor nephrectomy include bleeding, pneumothorax, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, wound complications, and deep vein thrombosis with or without pulmonary embolism.
Living donors may increase the risk of metabolic diseases such as end-stage renal disease (ESKD), pre-eclampsia, hypertension, and gout. Donors with ESKD are more likely to develop than healthy non-donors.
Kidney donation can also have an impact on the health of pregnant women. Living kidney donation increases the risk of high blood pressure and preeclampsia in pregnancy compared to other similar healthy women. Women with post-donation pregnancies are more likely to develop fetal loss, gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension, and preeclampsia than pre-donation pregnancies. However, pregnancy outcomes in women after donation were generally good.
According to statistics, the quality of life of donors after kidney donation surgery is generally good, however, some people do experience psychosocial difficulties after donation (e.g., depression, anxiety, negative changes in interpersonal relationships, or more painful than expected, slower physical recovery) [1, 2].
……
Therefore, kidney donation is more like another form of "life for life". This is also why it is said that the donation that is really out of affection must be righteous, but those who hesitate are still recommended to make prudent decisions.
Write at the end:
Human evolution to the present, it is difficult for you to find the organs of "eating empty food" in yourself, in addition to learning to make money and learning to manage life, in fact, what we should learn most is to take care of our own bodies.
Well, I'm a urology doctor, and finally I wish you a bright heart!
This article is written by Liu Jiayi
The First Affiliated Central Hospital of Nankai University
bibliography:
[1] Kidney transplantation in adults: Risk of living kidney donation. Krista L Lentine, MD, PhD John Vella, MD, FACP, FRCP, FASN, FAST
[2] The true risk of living kidney donation. Luckmini Liyanagea, Abimerki Muzaalea, and Macey Henderson
[3] CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, Volume: 71, Issue: 1, Pages: 7-33, First published: 12 January 2021, DOI: (10.3322/caac.21654)
*The content of this article is a popularization of health knowledge and cannot be used as a specific diagnosis and treatment recommendation, nor is it a substitute for face-to-face consultation by a practicing physician, for reference only.
*The copyright of this article belongs to Tencent Medical Code, unauthorized media reprinting is prohibited, and illegal reprinting will be investigated for legal responsibility according to law. Individuals are welcome to forward to the circle of friends.
![How many times has the textbook been rewritten this year? From birds to cancer cells... These findings refresh human cognition[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)