ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Organ transplantation offers the gift of life to over 25,000 patients with end-stage organ failure in the United States annually. The majority of these are renal allografts, followed by liver and heart transplants, with lesser number of multiorgan transplants and transplants of lung, pancreas, and intestine (Table 1). It is estimated that there are 150,000 organ-transplant recipients currently alive in the United States. Unfortunately, 81,262 people are on the transplant list awaiting allografts to become available and about 6000 die each year without having received an allograft. Organ donation numbers have increased only slightly over the past decade. The rise in transplantation rates is primarily due to the increased use of living related allografts from kidney and liver donors.
