[Experience of intensive care by medical and nursing staff in transplantation units]

Findings of this paper are responses from more than eighty paramedic staff members or transplantation departments (multi-organs, adults-children) in formation. It concerns three points: specific intensive care for corpses whose organs are to be extracted (teams/relatives); staff in operating rooms where extractions are carried out taking into account cultural anthropology (rituals, ethics, legal aspects); intensive care for new grafts with experimental protocols (children, mucoviscidosis, heart-lungs, small intestine). Two perspectives are set forth successively on the basis of psychoanalysis and anthropology. The scope of closeness and remoteness is a key means to approach the problems inherent in grafts, parallel to the immunologic principle. The extraction of organs causes symbolic and cultural given to appear, leading to the elaboration of fantasies isclosure of archaisms and its fears. So, the positive dynamics of grafts requires a structuring cultural process to preserve their success and intensification.