Heart Diseases and Respiratory Diseases: Transplant Surgery
(asked on 14th April 2026) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve access to heart and lung transplants across England.
The Government recognises the importance of ensuring timely and equitable access to heart and lung transplantation services and of improving patient outcomes.
Access to transplantation is based on nationally agreed clinical criteria, with organs allocated through a national system managed by NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) to ensure equity according to clinical need. NHSBT publishes data annually on access and outcomes in its organ-specific reports, which are available at the following link:
https://www.odt.nhs.uk/statistics-and-reports/annual-activity-report/
This data shows good overall post-transplant survival rates, alongside some variation between centres. In addition, the data shows no evidence of geographical variation beyond chance for heart and lung transplantation rates, and some variation in lung registration rates. Further work is needed to understand and address unwarranted variation in access to transplantation.
Variation in patient outcomes, including longer‑term survival and listing outcomes, are reviewed through established NHSBT and NHS England clinical governance processes, including routine outcome review and centre‑specific follow‑up where indicated. The National Transplant Clinical Panel has been established to provide expert clinical interpretation of transplant outcome data to support oversight where issues of statistical variation are identified.
To improve access and outcomes, NHS England has established a national improvement programme, informed by the Implementation Steering Group for Organ Utilisation’s Cardiothoracic Information Collation Exercise. This programme, alongside NHS England’s commissioning structures, includes work to improve referral pathways, organ utilisation, and service consistency, through strengthened peer review processes, an audit of organ acceptance practices, and work with transplant centres to support consistent decision-making. Further information on NHS England’s national improvement programme and the Implementation Steering Group for Organ Utilisation’s Cardiothoracic Information Collation Exercise is available, respectively, at the following two links:
While progress has been made, including increases in transplant activity and reductions in waiting lists, NHS England continues to work with partners to ensure services are consistent, resilient, and able to meet patient need across the country.