Ohio Helps More People Receive Life-Changing Kidney Transplants

According to OPTN data, the number of deceased organ donors at four Ohio organ procurement organizations increased from 515 in 2017 to 661 in 2020. That is a rise of about 28% over three years.

Some of that growth happened during the opioid epidemic. OPTN separately identifies drug intoxication as a donor's mechanism of death. Across these four Ohio OPOs, donors who died from drug intoxication increased from 86 in 2017 to 134 in 2020, a 56% increase. By 2020, approximately one in five deceased organ donors in these Ohio OPOs had drug intoxication recorded as the mechanism of death.

The opioid epidemic had devastating consequences for Ohio communities. One unintended consequence was increased organ donation, often from younger donors. National transplant research has documented a substantial increase in organ donation following drug-overdose deaths between 2017 and 2020. The opioid epidemic, however, does not fully explain Ohio's strong donor supply. Drug-intoxication donors contributed meaningfully to the growth in deceased donation between 2017 and 2020, but they represented only part of Ohio's donor pool.

Deceased donation has remained strong even as the number of donors who died from drug intoxication has declined in recent years. For example, LifeBanc recorded 45 drug-intoxication donors in 2022 and 22 in 2024, while its total number of deceased donors remained nearly unchanged at 276 and 271, respectively. Lifeline of Ohio shows a similar pattern: drug-intoxication donors declined from 54 in 2023 to 34 in 2024, while total deceased donors actually increased slightly, from 248 to 252. Today, deceased donors come from a broader range of circumstances, including cardiovascular deaths, strokes, traumatic injuries, drug intoxication, and other causes.

According to OPTN data, patients in Ohio benefit from these shorter waits without relying on higher-risk kidneys. In 2025 alone, transplant centers across Ohio performed 1,037 deceased-donor kidney transplants. Impressively, only 9.5% of these used higher-risk kidneys with higher KDPI scores (86–100) compared to 18.7% nationwide. Plus, kidneys with the lowest KDPI scores (0–34)—the most desirable—made up 30.7% of Ohio transplants, right in line with the national average of 30.4%.

Ohio’s statewide supply and demand is evident: five out of six kidney transplant programs report estimated waits for a deceased-donor kidney of two years or less. Some programs have waits as short as one year or even six months.