US National Organ Transplant Waitlist Distribution
PlainTransplant catalogues the national waitlist and annual transplant volume distribution by organ across the SRTR national dataset. Rendered live from the national_stats table.
Research period:
Research question
How are the US national organ transplant waitlists and annual transplant volumes distributed across organ types, and what does the kidney-dominant distribution tell us about US transplantation capacity versus need?
Methodology
This ranking reflects the data currently in our database, sourced from the agency referenced in the citation below and updated automatically as new filings are processed.
Coverage and exclusions: the source agency occasionally suppresses values for confidentiality, small sample size, or quality control, and suppressed rows are excluded from this ranking rather than shown as zero. If the agency later revises a figure, the revised value replaces the old one automatically the next time our data is refreshed.
Data provenance: we pull each release as it becomes available and normalize it into our database; a later release simply supersedes the one before it, so readers never see a mix of old and new figures on the same page.
Comparability across years: when the source agency revises its release schedule, definitions, or coverage, we note the affected years on the methodology page so readers can compare like-with-like rather than across a changed measurement.
Editorial governance: a named editor reviews every ranking page before publication (see the byline above). If an entity disputes a figure attributed to it, corrections are checked against the official source record before any change is made.
Every number on this page can be traced back to its source by following the entity links and the citation below, so independent verification never requires anything beyond the original public source.
See the methodology page for the complete data-update process, source vintage, and field definitions.
US National Organ Transplant Waitlist Distribution
Live data: reflects the current dataset
The ranked top 7
Every row below reflects the current 7-record dataset. Reload the page after new data is processed to see the latest values.
| # | Organ | On waitlist | Annual transplants | Active centers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | kidney | 94,492 | 105,852 | 236 |
| 2 | liver | 9,623 | 39,369 | 147 |
| 3 | kidney_pancreas | 2,225 | 4,202 | 126 |
| 4 | lung | 918 | 9,035 | 77 |
| 5 | pancreas | 666 | 944 | 101 |
| 6 | intestine | 198 | 422 | 19 |
| 7 | heart | 0 | 203 | 41 |
Source: Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) / OPTN, SRTR national statistics with organ-level waitlist and volume breakdown. Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed. Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) / OPTN, SRTR national statistics with organ-level waitlist and volume breakdown. Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed.
Findings
Top entity in the ranking
The top-ranked record in this dataset is kidney, with a value of 94,492 on the On waitlist column. The full top-7 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) / OPTN publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.
Distribution shape
The gap between the top-ranked record (94,492) and the 7th-ranked record (0) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-7 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.
Aggregate context
Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.
Source provenance
The records in this ranking originate from Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) / OPTN, specifically the SRTR national statistics with organ-level waitlist and volume breakdown. PlainTransplant ingests the source vintage published by the agency and keeps this page current, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published dataset is reflected here within hours. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and the steps applied to prepare the data.
Why this ranking matters
Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.
What this analysis cannot tell us
Waitlist totals reflect the count of candidates actively listed in the OPTN/UNOS waiting list at the time of data extraction. Waitlist counts do not equal demand, many patients with advanced organ failure are never listed due to comorbidities, geographic access, insurance, or referral patterns. Annual transplant counts reflect transplants performed at SRTR-reporting US programs and include both deceased-donor and living-donor procedures where applicable. The kidney waitlist is by far the largest because kidney is the only solid organ for which dialysis offers a survival bridge, allowing patients to accumulate on the list over years; other organ waitlists (heart, liver, lung) attrit faster due to mortality among waitlisted patients. Center counts indicate active transplant programs at the national level. This distribution is a snapshot, not a trend, year-over-year shifts depend on donor recovery rates, OPO performance, and organ-acceptance criteria changes.
Secondary cut from the same source
Annual transplant volume by organ type, the inverse of waitlist demand
Sources
- SRTR, National Statistics - https://www.srtr.org/transplant-centers/
- OPTN, Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network national data - https://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/data/
Every figure on PlainTransplant is rendered directly from SRTR Program-Specific Reports data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on SRTR Program-Specific Reports data, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.