It’s an odd question, but perhaps one that might pop into your head from time to time: What happens to extracted organs or teeth after surgery? Can you keep them?
After all, they are yours, even if they have been chopped out of your body in the very recent past.
There’s the question of why people would want an appendix or molar once it’s extracted.
Much like when our parents kept our baby teeth, some people might want to keep teeth or organs as momentoes.
If you’ve been through something traumatic like an operation after an emergency, it’s understandable that you might like a souvenir, even if it happens to be made of flesh and needs to be stored in formaldehyde.
William Shatner had his own reasons for keeping extracted parts and sold his kidney stones in 2006 for $75,000, giving the money to charity.
Others may have had a unique condition and have been approached by research bodies who’d like to study their organ.
Whatever the reason, though, the answer on whether you’re allowed to take home your tooth or body part varies.
According to the Human Tissue Authority, you should technically be allowed to have whatever comes out of you – within reason.
Speaking to the BBC about limbs after amputation, Jenna Khalfan, from the Human Tissue Authority, said: ‘From a legal perspective you are free to do anything with [an amputated limb] as long as there is not a public health issue.
‘Broadly we would say that an individual who wanted to take their tissue home with them would need to give written consent that would be recorded by the hospital to ensure traceability.’
In practice, however, it’s a little murkier. What constitutes a public health issue can vary from case to case.
For example, Plastic Surgeon and founder of Eterno 360 Clinic Fulvio Urso-Baiarda, says it’s generally ‘a bad idea to return body parts to a patient’.
He tells Metro.co.uk: ‘Even though it’s the patient’s own body bit, it could be hazardous to the general public and we would not be able to vouch for its proper disposal once it had left us.
‘I’m sorry, but you don’t get to keep your bits of skin, fat or other spare parts. Body parts are incinerated (after being sent off for analysis if that is part of the plan).’
You have no legal right to be able to take home your gall bladder or kidney, for example, and if you do ask and the doctor says no, there’s not really any recourse for you. Because they can say that it might not be stored or disposed of correctly, they will always have the ‘public health’ retort.
If you are specifically keen, though, giving your practitioner a viable reason for why and showing you will take proper care of it can go some way. If it’s for research and an authorised person will be safely picking it up, you’re more likely to get a yes than if you just want to put your amputated finger in a fish tank to scare the kids.
There’s also a differentiation between different body parts. You’ll likely hear of many people who were able to take gallstones home and decidedly fewer that have bits of their own liver in their home.
Teeth that are extracted from an adult are often infected, and in this case, will be disposed of safely by the dentist – since cleaning them ready for you to bring with you (removing chances of passing on infection) would likely be costly and difficult.
When major organs (or parts of them) are extracted, this is normally due to a major condition such as cancer. They will be sent to a pathology department for tests, so you simply aren’t able to take them away with you.
Fulvio does say, though, ‘Implants are potentially another matter. These are the patient’s own property and they can have them if they really must.
‘However, for the same reason as for body parts, we would have to make sure it is cleaned and packaged appropriately before handing it over.
‘There could be a charge for this, and your request may need to reach more than one person before you find someone able to make it happen, so it’s still not straightforward.
‘Not all implants are equally suitable for handing over either – your old hip replacement would be relatively straightforward to prepare (interesting aside – I knew an orthopaedic surgeon who had used one to replace the gear knob on his old MG), whereas a pacemaker, with its difficult-to-clean wires, would not be.’
Is this a common request he has? Not really.
‘In reality, very few patients ask for their implants back,’ Fulvio says, ‘and when they do it tends to be part of a legal investigation into some form of device failure (in which case we prefer to pass it directly to the investigating laboratory).’
The dream of keeping your appendix on your mantelpiece or your teeth on a chain may not be easily reachable. It’s probably for the best – who wants to see that, anyway?
MORE: Incredible pictures of orphaned fox raised by two Scottish photographers
source https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/01/will-doctors-dentists-let-keep-body-parts-teeth-surgery-12162360/
0 Comments