Deceased organ donation covers our organ needs. In India, we are woefully short of organs such as kidneys and livers in cases of liver and kidney failure that need to be transplanted.Deceased donation, as the name sounds, is a donation by people who are brain dead, whose family has now accepted and has willingly donated their organs for the benefit of the rest of the world.Live donation, on the other hand, is a donation by living or emotionally related individuals who want to donate a kidney to a diseased patient. A live donation is usually transplanted immediately. It's done in the same centre, and both are done together, as the harvesting of the organ from the donor and transplantation are done simultaneously.On the other hand, a deceased organ from a cadaveric donor may be harvested in a different geographical location and may be transported over time and over a lot of distance to another centre. Deceased donation can be done for organs that cannot be transplanted by live donation, which are so consequential to a human body, such as the heart, lungs, and pancreas. They are very vital and cannot be transplanted from a live patient to another.In a deceased organ donation, we can even donate tissues such as the cornea, skin, and blood vessels, which are required as a part of donation, as a part of other organ donation transplant programmes or, for example, in giving vision to people who have a white cornea or corneal opacity.These are a few differences between live and deceased or cadaveric donation.Dr. Vikram Shah Batra, Director - Urology, Kidney Transplant and Uro Oncology, Max Super Speciality Hospital, Dwarka