Living Donation practices in Spain dates back on 1965 when in Hospital Clinic of Barcelona, was successfully performed the first kidney transplantation with a kidney offered by a living donor.
Nowadays, this practice has reached a great experience and Hospital Clinic of Barcelona keeps the leader position, performing Living Donors Transplants for solid organs kidney and liver.
The number of Living Donors (LD) is increasing and more in-depth investigation for the process is needed. According to Hospital Clinic experience, the first alert for LDs follow-up dates on year 2000 and since than it remains in the focus of health care professionals to assess and follow-up the Living Donor process.
It has been working in defining recommendation and common terms in aspects such as: protection, security, legislation, ethical and registry in collaboration with different partners in European project: European Living Donation and Public Health - EULID (2007 - 2009) and European Living Donor Psychosocial Follow-up - ELIPSY (2009 – ongoing) co-funded from the European Union as well as with Nationals partners in FIS project (2011 – ongoing) co-funded from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III.
In this background in Hospital Clinic of Barcelona, Assessor on Transplantation-Medical Direction Department was created a group of experts on living donation named LIDOBS, acronyms of Living Donor Observatory, to serve the purpose as professional observer of Living Donation. The main duty of the group is to join efforts to improve the quality of the procedure as well as to establish international consensus in order to protect living donors’ health and safety through research activities.
