Organ donation Scotland doesn't need to know what sex their donors are !

I have just opted in specifying which organs I am happy to donate. The 'gender' question was compulsory and had 5 options.
Male, Female, Other, Transgender or Prefer not to Say.

So either they are asking about sex and believe there are more than two, or they are actually asking for gender identity which is surely completely irrelevent for organ donation. Either way it didn't sit right with me on a form from a medical organisation.

Also thanks for the reminder to opt out.

I have done so already but am suspicious that the Scotgov will use any excuse to slip people back on the yes list without telling us.

In my view this is a gross breach of bodily autonomy. I object in the strongest terms to the presumed opt in and I find the manipulative and coercive way the choice is presented as patronising and offensive.

They are saying that not having sex as an indicator could cause all sorts of medical issues with the recipient. Well it won’t because it’s an opt out form! There will be no recipient!

The general agreement seems to be that clinicians involved in a transplant are aware of the sex of the donor or recipient in all but the most unusual edge-cases.

However, if the sex information is being collected to assess willingness to be a donor (whether to give consent or to opt out) then it might be relevant to identify any demographic information that might be used to fund support and education programmes. Eg, if men sign up to opt out then that might be interesting. If the default is now that everyone has opted in in Scotland and men don't opt out then that probably tells some researchers something about inertia rather than actual objection to transplantation.

The people campaigning for change have already done the damage, women didnt get much of a say in it, not all of the repercussions will be known or understood.
OP didnt understand the form she posted, it was explained and the discussion moved on.

Are organ recipients allowed to take cross sex hormones?

Also - just to add more generally, that I have been involved in a case where it was not immediately obvious to me which sex a patient was. It became clear as soon as I looked at their prescription chart because of the cross sex hormones they were on!

I'm pretty certain if you try to put the wrong size organ in a chest cavity it might make a difference. Aren't male hearts much larger?

Rule of thumb, if your heart is healthy it will be about the size of your loosely closed fist so yes they are on average bigger but not incompatible, it wouldn't work for a child though.

The thing is - either your sex matters for organ donation - in which case it should be known for the safety of patients - or it doesn’t - in which case it is wrong to ask people to reveal unnecessary personal data.

I don’t know enough about organ donation to know which of these is true. But either way - the question is wrong.

Do you know which organs are sex dependent?

As far as I'm aware there are no organs which are only transplanted into recipients of the same sex, however size of organ may be a factor that's considered. For instance, it would be less common for a female heart to go to a man and vice versa because the difference in size can be problematic. It does happen though.

I know the link was nothing to do with organ retrieval, I'm just struggling to see how anyone can be OK with forcing medical staff and the health budget to take the consequenses for an ideology.

There are consequenses, you can't forsee them all. You are minimising the risk to patients and staff.

There are genuine concerns about the possible impact of sex and gender being used interchangeably when it comes to medical studies and the risk of individuals not being flagged up for routine screenings (prostate check or smears.) ^ This is a fuss about nothing.

[quote Thelnebriati]If the recipients medical history is unclear to staff they could lose out on an organ. I'm not seeing how this is hard to understand.

metro.co.uk/2019/05/20/pregnant-transgender-mans-baby-died-because-nurse-didnt-realize-he-was-in-labor-9613972/[/quote]
The link you provided has nothing to do with organ donation and everything to do with the fact that a transgender man did not notify medical staff that he was born female and could be pregnant. Had he done that, the outcome may have been different.
A recipient of organ donation will already have had a huge amount of tests, over a period of time, during which it would be absolutely obvious what sex they were.

If the recipients medical history is unclear to staff they could lose out on an organ. I'm not seeing how this is hard to understand.

metro.co.uk/2019/05/20/pregnant-transgender-mans-baby-died-because-nurse-didnt-realize-he-was-in-labor-9613972/

I used to work in organ retrieval. This is a big fuss about nothing. Nobody donates their organs without a full medical history being available. There are multiple ways in which it will become obvious - record of any previous surgery, list of medications and top to toe physical examination are all essential pieces of information before any organs are offered. You'll also be pleased to know that the last time I checked, the forms which record all the details of the donation process ask for the sex of the donor, not the gender.

There is no way that a donor will somehow be mis-sexed. And even if that did happen (which it wouldn't), the respective sex of the donor and recipient is less important than tissue typing, blood group, size of organ and urgency of the transplant.

@gardenbird48
Living kidney donors are by far and large related to the recipient. I’m pretty certain if a transwoman was donating a kidney to their sister, the sister, and the doctors would know they were trans, as this type of transplant is planned well in advance and a multitude of tests are carried out beforehand.

[quote Soontobe60]@gardenbird48 the vast majority of donors are already in hospital. Those who are ‘brought in’ would be through things like RTAs where they are still alive and not yet being considered as donors. If they had died at the scene, they would not be suitable for donation. Donors have to be medically alive on a ventilator in order to be used.[/quote]
Not living donors for things like a kidney.

This is helpful. There is quite a process of medical records review and other evaluation before an organ donor gets as far as the physical examination.

I guess a red flag may be raised if patient records are not complete or are not available prior to a certain date and the records that are available might contain relevant information likes taking cross sex hormones but then again, if a trans patient is taking private treatment from GenderGP for example or self medicating, much of that history may not be available to NHS staff.

Given that some trans patients have prioritised obscuring their birth sex to the point of putting their own life at risk and resulting in a baby dying, I’m not convinced that everyone is responsible enough to voluntarily provide the correct information.

Keeping accurate medical records is important and no group should be allowed to obscure both for their own safety and the safety of others.

www.odt.nhs.uk/odt-structures-and-standards/organ-donation-retrieval-and-transplantation-teams/patient-potential-donor-assessment/

Even taking into account the stats around the impact of the sex of the donor, if the options are between an organ meaning potential success and no organ meaning certain death then that organ will be transplanted. My understanding is a lot goes on before the decision is made on whether the organ is suitable.

@gardenbird48 the vast majority of donors are already in hospital. Those who are ‘brought in’ would be through things like RTAs where they are still alive and not yet being considered as donors. If they had died at the scene, they would not be suitable for donation. Donors have to be medically alive on a ventilator in order to be used.

[quote Thelnebriati]''...one study of more than 230,000 US organ donations from 1998 to 2012 showed that female-to-male kidney transplants were among the least likely to succeed.''
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28596416/

''men who received a heart from a female rather than male donor, for example, had a 15% higher chance of dying within the next five years.''
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19808369/[/quote]
Presumably the doctors knew the sex of both the recipient and the donor though. It’s not a case of mistaken identity.