Overview
- The Kidney Transplant Collaborative found 116 fewer kidney transplants in 2025 versus 2024, a 0.4% decline driven entirely by a drop in recovered deceased donors even as living-donor transplants rose by about 100.
- The report links the downturn to widely publicized patient-safety incidents involving halted organ recoveries, increased withdrawals from donor registries, and more cautious OPO practices, particularly in Donation After Circulatory Death cases.
- Transplant volumes held steady early in 2025 before sliding after June, while a 7.2% reduction in the kidney discard rate improved utilization and muted what would have been a larger fall.
- Regulatory scrutiny intensified in 2025, including HHS flagging patient-safety concerns in a Kentucky OPO probe that the organization denied and CMS decertifying the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency while assigning a Nevada group to manage Southern Florida procurement.
- KTC urges a rapid national scale-up of proven living-donor navigation and support programs as more than 94,000 Americans await a kidney transplant, and the OPO trade group calls for steps to rebuild public confidence.