In 2024 58 hearts were transplanted – 2 were even sent to Spain, for lack of compatible receiver in Portugal.
Last year, Portugal reached the record of heart transplants: 58.
The number was an increase of 0.5% compared to the previous year, and is above the largest so far, 55 transplants in 2013.
However, this value does not yet respond to the needs of theS 60 patients who were in 2024 on the waiting list To receive these transplants, performed in 4 hospitals in the country. Nevertheless, there were 2 hearts to be sent to Spain for lack of a compatible receiver in Portugal.
Even so, Nuno Gabinonational coordinator of the transplantation of the Portuguese Institute of Blood and Transplantation (IPST), says to what “at a time when we talk so much about the problems of the NHS”, this is an important achievement.
“If we had more available organsWe had installed ability to transplant more, ”says the doctor, who states that the solution is to change the law to be more permissive to these transplants.
The national IPST coordination and transplant units will meet this week with the Secretary of State for Health, Ana Povo to discuss the widening of the harvest patients in controlled circulatory death.
As an example is Spain, where 51% of transplants are performed in this circumstance.
The Portuguese Bioethics Association (APB) had already sent an opinion to the Health Commission last year to defend this idea (also supported by the Portuguese Society of Transplantation), but No advances were made in this regard.
The president, Rui Nunes, believes that the theme was not treated “probably out of oblivion or inertia.”
