In the classic 1975 British comedy film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur battles a mysterious Black Knight who refuses to let him pass. Arthur deftly defeats his enemy by cutting off their limbs one by one, but the knight is unwilling to admit defeat and insists that the damage is “just a flesh wound.”
Dark humor aside, this film raises the question of how much of your body you can lose and still survive. There are approximately 80 organs in the human body, but only five are defined as critical organs essential to sustaining life. The lungs and heart take in the necessary oxygen cells and distribute them throughout the body. The liver plays an important role in digestion and blood detoxification. The kidneys then filter waste and excess fluid from the body.
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Scientists debate whether some features, such as wisdom teeth or the coccyx, serve any purpose at all. Other body parts, such as the eyes and tongue, have a significant impact on a person’s quality of life, but are not strictly necessary for survival.
Limbs may be useful (just kidding!), but if amputation becomes necessary, a person can live without them. “In general, we try our best to save the arm rather than the leg, because the functional outcome of leg prostheses is pretty good, especially below the knee. On the other hand, the hand is very important for our behavior,” Weaver told Live Science.
This means the Black Knight likely would have survived the ordeal had he been taken to a modern hospital, but Mr Weaver said significant blood loss would likely have stopped him from posing a symbolic provocation.
In the treatment of trauma patients, it is most urgent to stop blood loss before it becomes fatal. This threshold varies, but if you lose more than three liters of the roughly five liters of blood in an adult’s body, “it’s pretty hard to recover,” she says.
Still, everyone is different. “I’ve certainly seen people survive situations where they were sure they were going to die. That’s why I keep coming to work,” she added.
Can you survive without part of your vital organs?
It is possible to live without some of your vital organs. People can live without much of their liver and most of their brain as long as their brainstem, which regulates involuntary functions such as breathing, remains intact. Humans only need one kidney, and you may donate one to someone in need. Weaver said it is difficult for a patient to survive an injury that damages all of these organs at once, but if the tissue is removed more gradually, the patient may be able to survive.
Vital organs can also be replaced by transplantation or by life-sustaining organ support techniques, such as kidney dialysis or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), which are responsible for the functions of the heart and lungs. Weaver said there are only two vital organs that cannot be replaced by machines: the liver and the brain, but liver transplants are possible.
“We are increasingly able to mechanically or chemically replace organ functions,” said Jason Wasserman, a professor of basic medical research at the William Beaumont School of Medicine at the University of Auckland.
These medical advances are complicating what it means to survive the loss of certain organs. Wasserman noted that while some organ maintenance techniques, such as ventilators and dialysis, can be used for long periods of time, others, such as ECMO, are “bridges to treatment” such as eventual transplantation, not “bridges to nowhere” that are used indefinitely. The decision to initiate or continue any of these interventions will depend on the medical appropriateness of the patient’s situation and the patient’s personal values, he said.
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