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In Italy, the number of organ donors as well as the number of transplants performed considerably increased over time. In 2023, Tuscany was the region with the highest number of organ donors per million inhabitants in the country. Kidney and liver transplant were the most common surgical procedures.

The principle of explicit consent or dissent

Organ donation is the act of giving a part of one’s own body to a person waiting to receive a transplant. It is a safe and established therapy for the treatment of serious organ failure. There are two types of procedures: deceased organ donation and living organ donation. The first one takes place whenever the organ comes from a corpse and in Italy it is more common than living donation. Living donation can be performed only for certain kinds of organs and often it requires a family or affective bond between the donor and the recipient. In Italy, the willingness to donate organs is regulated by the principle of explicit consent or dissent, while the principle of tacit consent has never been enacted.

Comparison to organ donation worldwide

In 2022, Italy - with roughly ** deceased organ donors out of one million inhabitants - was the European country with the seventh highest rate of deceased organ donors. Spain ranked first with a rate of **** deceased donors per million population. Moreover, in a 2018 survey conducted in ** selected countries worldwide, 66 percent of Italians expressed their willingness to donate their organs, against an average of ** percent of respondents from around the world.