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Introduction: Heart transplantation (HTx) has emerged as a pivotal intervention for end-stage heart failure, offering significant improvements in survival and quality of life. This manuscript elucidates the landscape of HTx across Latin America (LATAM) from its advent in 1968 through December 2022, shedding light on its evolution, current practices, and regional disparities., Methods: We distributed a structured questionnaire to the national coordinators or representatives of the Interamerican Council of Heart Failure and Pulmonary Hypertension, collating responses from 20 LATAM nations. This approach facilitated a comprehensive aggregation of regional HTx data., Results: A total of 12,374 HTx were performed in 166 centers across 16 LATAM countries, with Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia accounting for the majority of procedures. Pediatric transplants represented 9% of the total caseload, and combined organ transplants were reported in 62.5% of the participating countries, underscoring the complexity and breadth of transplant services in the region., Conclusion: Despite facing infrastructural and logistical challenges, LATAM has demonstrated a robust capacity to conduct high-complexity transplant procedures. The establishment of a structured, regional HTx registry is imperative to enhance data collection and analysis, which in turn can inform clinical decision-making and policy development, ultimately improving patient outcomes across the continent., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: From 1968 until 1997, transplantation-related activities were not properly regulated and were informally practiced. During 20 years, many legal and political changes influenced it., Objective: To provide a historical overview of the 20 years with a descriptive data analysis of a 20-year data set., Methodology: We investigated information from Brazilian Transplantation Reports between 1997 and 2017. In this way, we classified all data into 5 Brazilian macro regions: Center-West, Northeast, North, Southeast, and South. In total, we included 27 states (including Capital District) and limited study to the heart, liver, and kidney., Results: We analyzed 2835 data entries and associated population information from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. We observed 2 distinct groups, one uniquely formed by the North region, with figures significantly lower than the remaining regions. After 2003, Southeast, South, and Northeast regions indicated a growing movement, whereas Center-West indicated certain stability in 50 and ranging between 50 and 100 cases (yearly basis) after 2011. Recently (2016 and 2017), the South region indicates another crescendo movement suggesting another detachment from the other regions, but it is something not clearly observed and, if true, should be figured in new reports of Brazilian Association of Organ Transplantation., Conclusion: This study identified and observed the time-spatial progress of organ transplantation in Brazil. In conclusion, after analysis of this 20-year data consolidation related to organ transplantation in Brazil, we observed a public investment in implementing quality evaluation and safety to provide figures that deliver visibility to the numbers reported in this article., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The first experimental lung transplants were performed in 1947 by the Russian surgeon V.P. Demikhov. Thereafter, various aspects associated with lung transplantation were studied by groups from Italy, France, and mainly the United States. The first clinical lung transplant took place in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963 and was performed by D. Hardy. Until 1983, a total of 45 lung transplants were carried out at various centers, but only one patient transplanted in Ghent by F. Derom in 1968 survived for 10 months, whereas all other patients survived only hours to a few days. In 1983 at Toronto General Hospital, a single-lung transplant was performed that survived almost 7 years. From the same institution, the first long-term survivor after double-lung transplantation was reported in 1986. The first lobar transplant from a live donor was performed by V.A. Starnes at Stanford in 1990. The first heart-lung transplantation was performed in Houston by D.A. Cooley in 1968. Even though the girl who received this transplant survived only for 14 hours, this case showed that this kind of procedure can work. The first long-term survival was achieved by B. Reitz in 1981 in Stanford. In the German-speaking countries, successful lung and lung-heart transplants were reported between 1984 and 1993 and are described in detail., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)