You can be turned down for an organ transplant due to your weight. Is that fair?

Question

Accepted Answer

Is it fair? Probably not. However,  an obese person has very high probability of further problems and life threatening ones, that will make the organ that was donated,  useless. So they rather save a person that has less of a chance of dying after an organ was donated

Answer

I'm not sure if I'm right but doesn't being overweight risk the transplant not working or something? So if they did it and it didn't work then it would be a waste of an organ, so I can see why they wouldn't want to risk it. Plus being overweight generally makes the healing process longer and I'm pretty sure it has a higher risk of infection or something going wrong

Answer

Yes, because weight heavily affects your organs, making them less valuable/viable for transplants.

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Overall weight and health factor into the way your body will react to anesthesia, how you will take to medications, the probability of rejection, etc. It's not meant to be unfair or discriminatory, they simply want to be sure that donated vital organs go to a candidate that is likely to take well to the organ.

Answer

look at BMI charts.  Many people who believe they are "healthy" are overweight.  What if their illness was partly to blame for gaining weight? what if I woman gained weight from her fairly recent pregnancy and retained weight post partum?  I would not be comfortable placing value on someone's life based on weight.

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I would think it depends. Did the organ you're needing replaced fail due to weight related issues?  If it did,  then yes it's fair.  If it was completely unrelated to your weight then no.

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It's probably not fair but I would think there's probably a reason for it? Such as it being excessively dangerous or something? I don't think they just deny people any sort of treatment for no reason usually.

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I think they're doing what's best for the patient. If you're over or under weight there's potential risks, I'm assuming. I'm not a surgeon so I assume its due to health reasons.

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Yes it's fair. This is coming from an obese woman. 
The organ in question is more likely to become ineffective because of excessive body weight. You'll have to google but I've heard this many times. It's totally fair. we should make certain(or at least try to, there's no 100% with organ transplants) that the organ isn't being "wasted."

Answer

Anything that puts your health at risk will be a reason for them to not transplant you (such as being overweight). There's too many people awaiting transplants, so they will choose whoever needs it the most and whose quality of life will improve. I take care of a lot of kids who need heart transplants and they won't transplant a lot of them because of their weight as well. They won't even perform regular surgeries unless you're a certain weight. There's medical reasons behind it that I can't really think of right now. But we refuse transplant on kids with tracheostomies and other variables that affect quality of life

You can be turned down for an organ transplant due to your weight. Is that fair?

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