- Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub described transplantation as “one of the great success stories of the latter half of the 20 th century”.
- Surgeons have been saving the lives of people on the verge of death by transplantation for more than 50 years.
- The first successful transplant was of a cornea on 7 December 1905 in what is now the Czech Republic.
- The first major organ transplant success involved the donation of a kidney between living twins in Boston, USA, on 23 December 1954.
- The first heart transplant was performed in South Africa in 1967, by Dr Christiaan Barnard.
- Transplants are vital operations and their success depends entirely on the generosity of donors and their families who make this life-saving gift.
- The UK’s NHS Organ Donor Register was launched in October 1994 and by June 2007 included the names of over 14.3 million people who had pledged to donate their organs for transplant after their death.
Waiting and hoping
- More than 9,000 people need an organ transplant in the UK.
- Last year a record 3,086 people’s lives were transformed by a transplant. More than one in five of all transplants are from living donors.
- Transplants are now so successful that many more patients can be considered for treatment in this way.
- In 2001, an eight-year-old boy became the 100,000 th patient to be registered for a transplant.
- Advances in surgical skills and better drugs mean that a year after surgery 94% of kidneys in living donor transplants, 88% of kidneys from people who have died, 85% of organs in liver transplants and 81% of organs in heart transplants are still functioning well. These figures are improving all the time.
- The median (average) waiting time for an adult kidney transplant is 841 days. Children wait on average 164 days.
- Adults wait an average of 103 days for a heart and 406 for a lung. Children wait an average of 143 days for a heart.
- Adults wait an average of 95 days for a liver transplant, while children wait an average of 76 days.
- More than 400 people die every year in the UK while waiting for a kidney, lung, heart or liver transplant and many more die before they even get on to the transplant list.
Between 1 April 2006 - 31 March 2007
- 3,086 organ transplants were carried out, thanks to the generosity of 1,495 donors.
- 949 lives were saved in the UK through a heart, lung, liver or combined heart/lungs, liver/kidney, liver/pancreas or heart/kidney transplant.
- 2,137 patients saw their lives dramatically improved by a kidney, pancreas or combined kidney/pancreas transplant.
- A further 2,402 people had their sight restored through a cornea transplant – the highest number in nine years.
- Organs from 793 people who died were used in the UK to save or dramatically improve many people’s lives through 2,384 transplants.
- A record number of non-heartbeating donor kidney transplants took place and accounted for 1 in 7 of all kidney transplants.
- The highest number of combined kidney/pancreas transplants took place (164, representing a 53% increase on 2005-2006).
- More than 9% of transplants were given to recipients under 18 and more than 14% to recipients aged 60 or over.
- More than 17% (nearly one in six) of liver transplants involved recipients aged 60 or over, while patients aged under six received nearly 9% of liver transplants.
- 22% of heart transplants were given to patients under 18, while patients over 60 received 12% of all heart transplants.
- Patients with cystic fibrosis or fibrosing lung disease received 44% of combined heart/lung and lung-only transplants.
- About one in six kidney transplants, including living donor transplants, were received by people of minority ethnic origin in the UK.
- Living donor kidney transplants are increasing – 461 in 2003-2004, 475 in 2004-2005, 589 in 2005-06, and 690 in 2006-2007 – and now represent more than one in four of all kidney transplants.
- 7% of all living kidney transplant recipients were under 18 and 11% were aged 60 or over.
- The majority of living kidney donations in the UK were sibling-to-sibling.
Last updated May 2007
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