Weekly additions to US kidney transplant waitlist hits all-time high.

There are nearly 90,000 people waiting for a kidney transplant in the US as of July 2023. The final week of June broke the all-time record for new weekly additions to the list, with 1,069 getting in line. That brings the total number of kidney transplant waitlist additions for 2023 to 24,155, which also looks to be a record for the first 6 months of a year. (The data I’m looking at goes back to 2013, but I assume it was lower in the past, reflecting steady growth over time).

Here are facts about kidney transplants, and a call for everyone to become a donor today.

When was the first successful kidney transplant performed?

After numerous failed attempts in Russia, France, and the US, surgeons at Brigham Hospital (now my home, Brigham and Women’s Hospital) completed a successful kidney transplant in 1954. The failures leading up to it, and the subsequent successes which led to the modern era in which the procedure has become quite safe, make for fascinating reading.

How many kidney transplants are performed annually in the US?

In 2022, over 26,000 kidney transplants were performed, up from under 9,000 in the late 1980s. While each surgery is major, kidney transplants have become as close to “routine” as one could have hope to have imagined a century ago.

What is the average wait time for a kidney?

Three to five years. Of course, people can skip that line if a specific living donor volunteers to donate to a specific person. (Healthy people with two kidneys can donate one of them and expect no long-term kidney problems. One is usually enough!)

How did the pandemic change kidney transplants?

During the shelter-in-place period, most transplant surgeries stopped. However, by May and June of 2020, operating rooms were back up and running at close to normal numbers.

Kidneys donations from living donors plummeted when Covid-19 hit. The rates have slowly recovered, but even today, rates are lower than 2018-2019.

While outcomes from kidneys donated by living people are not actually different from those from deceased donors, finding a living donor can very much shorten the waitlist time for people who have that option.

What are the donor rates in the US?

As of 2022, 41% of survey respondents are organ donors. 46% are not, and the remaining 13% are either unsure or did not want to say.

Donor rates differ by age, gender, race, and income level. Young people (under age 30) donate less. Men donate less. White people donate more. People with income over $100,000 per year donate more. Republicans are more likely to be donors, though in the last election, donors were more likely to be Biden voters (50% to 48%)—which also suggests that voters in general are more likely to be organ donors than non-voters.

Why do donors give?

Generally speaking? Altruism. The desire to help others or someone they know are commonly cited reasons.

What reasons to non-donors give for not being a donor?

There are many mythes about organ donation that discourage people from being donors. They range from a belief that they themselves won’t get the best medical care if their own life is in danger to religious reasons. “Among the most common reasons listed among the 46% of Americans who are not organ donors was a general distrust of the medical industry, such as concerns that doctors will not try as hard to save them if the doctors know their organs could be used for donation. Others said that they believe their personal health conditions or age would make them ineligible for donation, while many expressed a general lack of knowledge about organ donation.”

Organ donors get great care. And all major religions support organ donation. Those and many other myths that prevent donors from wanting to give have been debunked.

Is there such a thing as being too old to be a donor?

Nope! Advanced is not a reason to not donate. Organ procurement teams assess all cases individually. While certainly the odds that an organ can be used decrease with age, we can leave those calls to the professionals.

How can you become an organ donor?

Every state has a different process, but here’s a link to find out how you can become a donor and save a life—or many!

Join me!

Having personally seen the lives saved by organ donation—from scrubbing into transplant surgeries when I was in medical school to seeing patients alive and well in the ER years later (they break bones just like everyone else!)—I can attest that organ donation is one of the best ways you can give back to humanity and pay-it-forward.

If anyone here has either donated or received an organ transplant—or know someone who has, please share your experience!