A total of 627 kidney transplant surgeries were performed in the Kingdom last year, bringing the number of kidney transplants, performed since the beginning of the organ donation program, to 9,000 surgeries, said Dr. Faisal Shaheen, director general of the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation (SCOT).

Since the beginning of the program, SCOT performed 2,694 kidney transplant surgeries from brain-dead donors and 6,316 from living donors, while a total of 1,610 liver transplant surgeries were carried out, including 794 operations from brain-dead donors and 816 from living donors, Shaheen said. The Kingdom carried out transplant surgeries for 280 hearts, 674 corneas, 135 lungs and 27 pancreases since the launch of the transplant program, the official confirmed.

He said: “Last year saw an increase in transplanted organs from brain-dead donors, as there were 253 organ transplant surgeries, compared to 203 in the previous year, with 131 kidney transplant cases, 70 liver cases, 31 hearts, and 214 tissues.”

Shaheen said that there were 10,591 brain-dead cases reported to the center in 2015, including 570 cases reported by intensive care units from all over the Kingdom, noting that the ratio of males to females accounted for 3 to 1, and ages were less than 40 years in 62 percent of cases.

He said: “A total of 350 cases out of the reported cases were documented, while 420 were not documented due to medical and technical reasons.”

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