Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many patients have had a adverse reaction to a transplant operation in each of the last five years.

Number of patients who have had a serious adverse reaction to an organ transplant operation in calendar years since August 2012* is as follows:

* data recorded prior to August 2012 is not included as it was reported on a voluntary basis. Therefore it is inconclusive and incomparable to the data recorded thereafter.

Source: NHS Blood and Transplant

NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) is able to provide the numbers of incidents categorised as Serious Adverse Reactions from 27 August 2012 when the Quality and Safety of Organs intended for Transplantation Regulations 2012 came into force. These regulations introduced mandatory reporting of incidents that fall within the Serious Adverse Event and Serious Adverse Reaction classification by all organisations involved in organ donation.

The reporting of an incident does not necessarily mean that someone involved has made a mistake. For example a donor may have an infection that was not known or detectable at the time of donation, an organ may have been damaged through the trauma which resulted in the donor’s death, or a donor’s anatomy can make retrieval more tricky and organ damage more likely. However where errors do happen, NHS Blood and Transplant promote an open and transparent approach to reporting and investigating the incidents.

While it is not possible to totally abolish risks from donation and transplantation it is vitally important for transplant centres to report as much as possible and work with all involved in organ donation and transplantation to identify and share learning and promote best practice from incidents both in the United Kingdom and across Europe. This improves patient safety and transplant success rates even further.