State-Level US Transplant Waitlists and Survival Rates in 2025

Findings

Kidney waitlists concentrate in the largest states

As of the 2025 SRTR state aggregates, about 94,492 people were waiting for a kidney transplant in the United States, and 105,852 kidney transplants were performed across 236 transplant centers.SRTR, State Aggregates, 2025 The waitlist is heavily concentrated by population: California alone accounted for 18,238 candidates, followed by Texas (9,243), New York (6,855), Pennsylvania (5,625), and Florida (4,855). Together those five states held more than 44,000 of the national total. Smaller states carry proportionally fewer candidates, with Alabama listing 966 and Arkansas 198, reflecting both population and the number of centers operating in each state. Because waitlist size scales with population and center count, it is the clearest axis on which states differ.

One-year survival is high and fairly uniform

Average one-year survival after a kidney transplant was roughly 95% nationally and varied within a narrow band across states, broadly 93% to 97%.SRTR, State Aggregates, 2025 Alabama's three centers averaged 97.3% and Arkansas's two centers 95.9%, both near the top of that range, while the largest-volume states sat close to the national figure (California 95.8%, Texas 95.6%, New York 94.0%). The narrow spread is expected: one-year survival is risk-adjusted, and programs that fall short of expected outcomes face regulatory review, so most cluster near the benchmark. Survival is therefore a weaker differentiator between states than waitlist size or transplant volume.

Transplant volume tracks waitlist size

States with the longest waitlists generally performed the most transplants, since both scale with population and the number of centers.SRTR, State Aggregates, 2025 Alabama completed 1,249 kidney transplants against its 966-person waitlist, while Arkansas performed 599 against 198 waiting. Nationally the 105,852 transplants were spread across all 48 kidney-reporting states, so a single year's transplants exceeded the standing waitlist, a reminder that the list turns over continuously as patients are transplanted, recover, or leave it. Comparing a state's annual transplants to its waitlist gives a rough sense of throughput, though it does not capture how long individual candidates wait.

How to read these numbers

These are point-in-time state aggregates from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) for the 2025 reporting period, covering kidney programs at centers that report to SRTR.SRTR, State Aggregates, 2025 The totals above cover all 48 states with kidney-program data (out of 226 state-by-organ records in the full dataset); 38 of those 48 states have at least two centers, which is the threshold used elsewhere on PlainTransplant to avoid small-sample volatility in single-center comparisons. Waitlist counts are snapshots rather than cumulative additions, and survival rates are risk-adjusted one-year figures. The data describes program activity and outcomes, not the experience of any individual patient, and is not medical advice. For a single state's center-level detail, see Arkansas state insights or browse the full state directory.