Sept. 10, 2022 --The United States recorded its 1 millionth organ transplant on Friday, 68 years after a man donated his kidney to his identical twin for the nation’s first organ transplant.

The milestone was announced at 12:50 p.m. Friday by the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit that has a government contract to run the nation’s only transplant network. The UNOS didn’t say what organ was transplanted or provide other details.

The number of organ transplants has grown steadily since the first liver transplant in 1954 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass., the UNOS says.

In 2021, 41,350 transplants were performed, topping the 40,000 mark for the first time, and 22,414 transplants have occurred so far in 2022. More than 500,000 transplants have occurred since 2007.

The UNOS has come under criticism for inefficiencies in its programs.

In August, U.S. members of a U.S. Senate committee said the UNOS does a shoddy job of tracking organ donations and transplants, a problem that hurts the poor and minorities the most and has caused deaths in people awaiting transplants, The Washington Post reported.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said the UNOS should be replaced.

“You should lose this contract,” Warren said. “You should not be allowed anywhere near the organ transplant system in this country.”

In a statement to The Post, the UNOS said it was upset by the findings but remained “dedicated to working with Congress to improve the system, which saves more lives every year.”

A study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology said many donated kidneys are unnecessarily discarded. Kidneys are the organ most in demand for transplants.

The UNOS says it has launched an initiative to make transplants more available to minorities and to use improved technology to track harvested organs and to keep donated organs available longer.

United Network for Organ Sharing home page

The Washington Post. “Senators slam transplant agency in contentious hearing”

Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. “Assessment of the Utility of Kidney Histology as a Basis for Discarding Organs in the United States: A Comparison of International Transplant Practices and Outcomes”

Journal of the American Society of Nephrology

United Network for Organ Sharing

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