Spain remains on the podium as the leading country in organ transplants with 23% of the EU and 5% of the world

In 2023, Spain has maintained its international leadership in organ donation , with a rate of 49.4 donors per million people. In addition, it contributed 23% of donors in the European Union and 5% of the world’s donors.

These are the figures from the latest report from the Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation, managed by the ONT as a collaborating centre of the World Health Organisation ( WHO ) and whose data are published annually in the Council of Europe’s Transplant Newsletter. In 2023, 171,762 transplants were performed in 89 countries, which represented a 9% increase in procedures compared to the previous year, according to data provided by the countries as of 15 August.

Of these, 110,563 were kidney transplants (39% from living donors), 41,044 liver transplants (25% from living donors), 10,115 heart transplants, 7,810 lung transplants, 2,053 pancreas transplants, and 177 intestine transplants.

These transplants were made possible by 45,759 people who donated their organs after 52,707 living donors had already died (42,631 kidney donors, 10,066 liver donors and 10 lung donors). Transplant activity in 2023 represents an increase of 9% compared to the previous year.

The greatest growth was in lung transplants, with an increase of 15%, followed by heart transplants (13%) and liver transplants (10%). One in four deceased donors was asystolic (with the heart inactive), a method in which Spain once again recorded the greatest activity, with 1,050 asystolic donors, which represents a rate of 22.1 per million of the population.

The European Union also broke its historic record, with 10,273 donors and 30,595 transplants, exceeding the figures prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, on average, ten patients died every day in the European Union while waiting for a transplant. In fact, as of 31 December 2023, a total of 50,978 patients in the EU were on the waiting list for an organ transplant.

123 TRANSPLANTS PER MILLION

With a rate of 49.4 donors per million people in 2023, Spain remained the country with the highest deceased donor activity globally, followed by the United States, with 48. In terms of transplant activity, Spain reached a rate of 123.4 transplants per million people in 2023, a figure only surpassed by the United States, with 139.7 transplants per million people. This difference is largely justified by the profile of deceased donors, who are older in Spain than in the North American country.

Thus, donors aged 65 or older represented 44% in Spain compared to 9% in the United States in 2023. The causes of donor death were also very different in both countries. In the United States, 17% of donors died from drug overdose, an exceptional cause of donor death in our country.