Organ decay

An untreatable degenerative disease affecting a single organ. The cause may be bacterial or viral. The illness seems to strike randomly from an unknown natural reservoir; it is not directly contagious between people. This organ will slowly lose function before dying completely. Replace it with a bionic or natural organ.

— Description

Organ decay is a rare, painful, and untreatable disease that causes increasingly reduced function in a particular organ, until destroying it completely.

Overview

Organ decay can affect the heart, lungs (left and/or right), and kidneys (left and/or right); multiple organs can be afflicted simultaneously (at least 3, at most, 5). Organ decay causes pain and reduced part efficiency (for example, breathing) in the afflicted organ with the associated knock-on effects. When the disease progress reaches 100% the affected organ will be destroyed- which is immediately fatal if the heart is destroyed.

The decaying organ can be surgically removed, but it cannot be harvested.

Organ decay will reach full saturation after 30 to 40 days. Accelerated organ decay, which appears on creepjoiners, will take only 10 to 20 days to reach maximum saturation. Surgical Inspection can reveal the presence of Organ Decay before the normal reveal.

Organ Decay Diagnosed early via surgical inspection.

The perfect immunity gene will prevent the acquisition of this disease during disease events, but it does not prevent organ decay from occurring on pawns at generation, such as with duplicated pawns. In such cases, organ decay is treated as a pre-existing condition that the gene cannot intercept, and the disease will progress in the same way as in pawns without the perfect immunity gene.

Stages

Minor

• +5% Pain
• −10% Part efficiency

Moderate

• +10% Pain
• −25% Part efficiency

Severe

• +15% Pain
• −50% Part efficiency

Extreme

• +25% Pain
• −75% Part efficiency
• Complete loss of function at 1 severity. Note that this will result in the pawn's death if the heart, both kidneys, or both lungs are affected and reach this severity.

Progression

Stages

If obtained by a disease event, it is detected immediately and starts at 0 severity. Severity increases over time, at a rate of 1.66% to 3.34% per day for normal organ decay, and at a rate of 5% to 10% for the accelerated version.

Organ decay can appear as a downside on creepjoiners or duplicates, although it initially stays undiagnosed. After diagnosis, it starts at 0.02% to 15% severity.

• Minor - Severity: 0 - 0.199
• Moderate - Severity: 0.2 - 0.399
• Severe - Severity: 0.4 - 0.599
• Extreme - Severity: 0.6 - 0.999
• Loss of function - Severity: 1

Treatment

Organ decay cannot be tended to or treated on its own, nor can it be prevented by penoxycyline. Instead, the organ must be replaced by any natural or artificial replacement, or the condition healed by healer mech serum, luciferium, the scarless gene, or unnatural healing. The bioregeneration cycle will not work. Note that luciferium and scarless heal conditions on a 15 day interval, so it may not be enough to cure accelerated organ decay.

Analysis

If only a single lung or kidney is affected, organ decay is not directly lethal. Still, the loss of an organ will reduce productivity, increase risk of death by destruction of the other organ, and cause pain until the organ is actually removed or replaced. Loss of a kidney will also make a pawn more vulnerable to other diseases.

The simplest way to cure organ decay is to harvest organs from a prisoner, but this inflicts a mood penalty on standard colonists. Note that installing an organic heart or prosthetic heart has an unavoidable chance to kill the pawn if the surgery fails - a bionic heart does not have this chance. Lungs and kidneys can also be replaced by detoxifier lungs and detoxifier kidneys, but these are more expensive and require higher research than their natural counterparts.

For lungs, it is additionally possible to give a pawn a fleshmass lung through a corrupted obelisk, though unless all other mutations are impossible, this is not guaranteed to happen.

Version history

• 1.5.4034 - Fix: Organ decay not working correctly.
• 1.5.4040 - Clarify organ decay description.
• 1.5.4046 - Fix: Organ decay incidents can affect infants, which cannot have their organs replaced.
• 1.5.4062 - Added.
• 1.5.4067 - Added custom descriptions to the diagnosed (hidden) versions of organ decay and crumbling mind to make them less confusing.

---

Disease

Deadly diseases

Flu • Infection • Lung rot • Malaria • Plague • Sleeping sickness • Organ decay • Blood rot • Infant illness

Non-fatal diseases

Fibrous mechanites • Gut worms • Muscle parasites • Sensory mechanites • Paralytic abasia

Animal diseases

Scaria