Number of organ transplants in the United Kingdom (UK) 2009-2022

In 2021/22, over 3.4 thousand organ transplants took place in the United Kingdom . The number of organ donors has increased year-on-year between 2014/15 and 2018/19, although numbers dropped in the subsequent COVID pandemic affected years.

Type of organs donated

The majority of transplants in the UK were kidney transplants, with over 2.2 thousand transplants of this kind carried out. A further 823 were liver transplants, followed by 179 heart transplants. The rate of organ donations in the United Kingdom amounted to 54.3 per million population in 2020.

Transplant waiting list in the UK

There were 4,744 patients on the active transplant list in the United Kingdom waiting for a kidney transplant as of March 2022. The number of individuals waiting for a kidney transplant was drastically higher than the number of patients waiting for any other organ in the country. Those waiting for a heart transplant had the second-highest number of active patients at 320, followed by 258 waiting for a lung transplant.