Introduction: Kidney paired donation (KPD) represents a strategy for increasing the number of living donor kidney transplants (LDKT), offering an incompatible donor/recipient pair the chance to exchange with another pair in the same situation. In Europe, this kind of transplant currently represents 8% of total LDKT, and in the USA account for 16.2%. This study aimed to evaluate the situation of KPD in the countries affiliated with STALYC.

Methods: We searched for “kidney paired donation”,  “kidney exchange” and each Stalyc countries' names in PubMed. Due to the paucity of results, we extended our search to Scielo and also added the spanish terms: “donacion renal cruzada”, “donacion renal pareada”, “trasplante cruzado” and “trasplante pareado”. We also conducted the exact search on Google.

Results: We found data from 16 out of 25 countries searched, of which 43,7% have laws allowing KPD and 37,5% have a record of KPD activity. Unfortunately, this activity is limited to isolated cases rather than an active program in the vast majority. Data are shown in Table 1.

Conclusion: Kidney transplantation, especially from living donors, is the best and less expensive treatment for end-stage kidney disease. Active KPD programs are scarce in the Stalyc countries. Despite housing 8% of the world's population and being composed mainly of low-to-middle income countries, in Latin America and the Caribbean patients still do not benefit from KPD and, consequently, from its full potential for LDKT.