Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Kidney Transplant: Wait Times & Patient Data

Strong living donor program. For decades, the University of Pennsylvania has excelled in living donor kidney transplants, and its program has grown even stronger in recent years. Beginning around 2023, the University celebrated the milestone of performing 100 living-donor transplants each year.

Longest waiting list in Pennsylvania, at 1200. For patients who already have a potential living donor—or who are successful in finding one—University of Pennsylvania will be better suited than relying on deceased donor donation alone. A patient can pursue both strategies at the same time: look for a living donor while also exploring transplant centers where a deceased-donor kidney may become available sooner. Lehigh Valley Hospital is only about an hour from Philadelphia, yet its estimated deceased-donor wait is approximately two years—significantly shorter than in Philadelphia.

University of Pennsylvania may be particularly worth exploring for highly sensitized patients. Under current OPTN kidney allocation policy, priority rises sharply at the highest cPRA levels: candidates with a 98% cPRA receive 24.40 allocation points, those at 99% receive 50.09 points, and candidates at 100% receive 202.10 points. As a high-volume kidney transplant program that also performs a meaningful number of transplants in highly sensitized patients, University of Pennsylvania may offer an important combination for difficult-to-match candidates: substantial allocation priority together with a program that regularly performs these more challenging transplants.