Introduction: The donation indicators decreased due to the pandemic in 2020. The redirection of resources and the uncertainty generated during the first stages are some of the reasons. Preserving this activity, even in a pandemic, is a need and an obligation.

Objective: Evaluate the impact of the pandemic on the rate of use of solid organs in Latin America.

Methods: Population of donors in Latin American countries was analyzed in a descriptive observational study. The data was extracted from the donation and transplant registry published in the Newsletter 2021. For this analysis, the rates of global and specific cadaveric donors for each organ (including liver, heart and lung) expressed as pmp donors were considered. The rate of use was calculated as: a ratio of the actual transplant, rate to the expected transplant, rate based on the donor rate pmp (assuming multi-organ cadaveric donors).

Results: The average Latin American donation rate was 11.7 pmp in 2019 and 7.3 pmp in 2020. The usage rate of liver was 49.8%, heart 16.5% and lung 5.3% in 2019. The usage rate for liver was 60.8 %, heart 18.2 % , and lung 6.24 % in 2020. Central America: donor rate pmp 5.76 in 2019 and 2.4 pmp in 2020. The liver usage rate was 36.2 % in 2019 and 31.4% in 2020.

Conclusions: A decrease in the pmp donor rate was observed in 2020 linked to the pandemic, but the rate of use was higher in the three organs in Latin America. There was better use of donors. Could we maintain or improve the efficiency of the procedures and thus increase the donation rates in these organs? In Central America and the Caribbean, this better use was not observed. The low number of countries may bias this result.