Data on the national activity of organ donation and transplantation in 2022 in Portugal, released by the Instituto Português do Sangue e da Transplantação (IPST), through the National Transplantation Coordination, state that the results “were globally positive, consistently resuming the post-pandemic growth”.
Regarding transplant oscillations in 2022 compared to 2021, the National Transplantation Coordination highlights, in a statement, that “lung transplantation has been on an upward slope since 2016, reaching in 2022 the highest number of lungs transplanted to date, 76 organs in 39 patients (increase of 18.8%), with the pandemic not having a major impact on the activity”.
The data also indicates that, although liver transplantation has not yet recovered to pre-pandemic values, it has remained relatively stable, despite the decrease in activity by 4.7%.
As for the pancreas, which is usually performed in the context of a double kidney-pancreas transplant, the data indicate that it had “an important peak in 2018”, but in 2022 it maintained the stability of other years, having registered an increase of 13.6% compared to 2021, with 25 transplants.
Heart transplantation had “a significant decrease” of 24.5% compared to 2021, the year in which “a significant peak in activity” was recorded, while kidney transplantation is “the largest volume transplant in Portugal”.