Last year, 547 kidney transplants were performed in Portugal, 71 of which were from living donors, the Portuguese Society of Nephrology (SPN) said, adding that the country ranks fifth in Europe for the number of such transplants.
The data was released in a statement marking National Organ Donation and Transplantation Day, which is celebrated on Saturday.
According to SPN, kidney transplantation is most common in Portugal, where 547 transplants were performed in 2023, 71 of which were from living donors.
According to SPN, which reports data for 2022, the latest year for which comparative information is available, the country has the fifth-highest kidney transplant rate in Europe, with 49.01 transplants per million inhabitants.
Advocates for SNPs, particularly with regard to deceased donor kidney transplantation, expansion of harvest teams in most hospitals, and expansion of cardiopulmonary arrest donation programs.
National Day of Organ Donation and Transplantation, established in 2019, is celebrated annually on July 20, the day when the first organ transplant took place in Portugal, in this case a kidney from a living donor, in 1969 at the University of Coimbra Hospitals.
In the 1980s, the first deceased donor kidney transplants were performed, followed by liver, heart, pancreas, lung, tissue and cell transplants.