RIYADH: The King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre set a world record in 2025 for the most kidney paired donation transplants performed at a single center in a year.

Paired exchanges involve two living donors and two recipients. If the recipient from one pair is compatible with the donor from the other pair, and vice versa, a “swap” can be arranged to allow for two simultaneous transplants to take place.

The hospital said it completed 130 transplants in 2025, 36 more than the highest-volume single center in the US, which performed 94.

The achievement “reflects the steady growth of the program since its launch in 2016, bringing the cumulative number of kidney paired transplants performed under the program to 691 by the end of 2025,” it said.

Dieter Broering, executive director of the hospital’s organ transplant center of excellence, told Arab News that paired kidney donation had become “a key pathway to expand access to transplantation for patients who would otherwise struggle to find compatible donors.”

“This milestone reflects the strength of an integrated model that combines advanced immunology testing, coordinated exchange chains and highly specialized multidisciplinary teams working together to deliver safe and effective transplant care,” he said.

The center uses advanced immunology laboratory capabilities for precise compatibility testing, a coordinated system for managing complex exchange chains and multidisciplinary clinical teams, including transplant physicians and surgeons, anesthesiologists, transplant coordinators, nursing staff and histocompatibility laboratory specialists.

The KFSHRC ranked first in the Middle East and North Africa and 12th globally among the world’s top 250 academic medical centers for 2026. It was also recognized as the most valuable healthcare brand in the Middle East by Brand Finance in 2025 and has been listed by Newsweek as being among the best hospitals in the world.