Podcast reassurance to equity of implementation: Expanding the therapeutic potential of charles bonnet syndrome education.

Chile is one of the world’s longest countries with 4.300 Km in length, including continental, insular and Antarctic territories with about 19 million inhabitants (). The political organization clusters in Santiago, the country’s capital, which belongs to the Metropolitan Region (MR), concentrating most of the health centers with transplantation units (17 out of 24, with 9 public and 8 private ones). The North and Austral macro-zones of the country have no transplantation units, whereas the Central-South and South macro-zones group 7 institutions in total (6 public and 1 private) () (). With this structure, Chile reported from 2015 to 2024: 1,572 effective donors resulting in 6,040 transplants, with 91% originating from public health institutions, 80% corresponding to deceased donors and 20% to living donors and presenting a mean donor age of 45 years (61% male). Seventy percent of donors came from the Central-South macro-zones. In 2015 the top 3 transplanted organs corresponded to kidney (n = 301), liver (n = 73) and heart (n = 24). However, in 2024 cornea overpassed heart transplantation, reaching 73 procedures, and kidney and liver transplantation increased to 395 and 184, respectively. Smaller increments were observed for heart, lung and pancreas, reaching 31, 16 and 5 procedures in 2024, respectively () (). This scenario is supported by the national health system, which is composed of a public and private sector. The public sector covers 80% of the population, representing close to 50% of the total health expenditure, whereas the other 50% is covered by “Instituciones de Salud Previsional” (ISAPRES) or private health insurances, and out-of-pocket payments (). Despite these numbers, we sought to investigate whether (and how) this transplantation activity is being supported by basic and clinical research: how many research groups exist in the country (and their location)? Is publication accompanying investigation in transplantation? How active is the transplantation community (researchers, clinicians) in Chile? To answer these questions, we consulted the web, including databases from Chilean scientific and medical societies, and Advanced Search in Pubmed. We found that only the Chilean Society of Transplantation and the Chilean Society of Nephrology received research abstracts for their corresponding national meetings, with 201 studies presented between 2015–2025. Of them, 8% correspond to basic research performed by only 2 academic-basic research laboratories placed in 2 private universities located in Santiago. The remaining studies (> 90%) covered a wide array of topics from clinical reports, post-transplant follow-ups, centers experiences, reports on surgical techniques, and studies including legal aspects, patients’ perception of waiting lists, and coordination of intensive care personnel. Given that basic research forms the foundation of applied and translational disciplines, the current state of transplantation-related basic research in Chile is concerning. In other words, how could we contribute -from Chile- to the advances of the transplantation field if research is limited? Regarding scientific publications, we used 2 search criteria: “Organ Transplantation” and “Transplantation Tolerance” as keywords, refining with “Chile” for affiliation, and “last decade” for date. Manually, we then selected those in which the corresponding author belongs to a Chilean institution. With the first keywords we found 120 publications, most of them case reports and reviews. For the second criteria, we only found 8 papers, mainly on basic research. Just considering the existing Transplantation centers, Chile has an annual rate of 0.53 publication/center in the Transplantation field. Activity of Organ Transplantation in last decade in Chile. Number of transplants performed between 2015–2024, and approx. Number of inhabitants (inhabs.) per macro-zones. In 2020, the Chilean territory, composed by continental, insular and Antarctic regions, was divided into the North, Central, Central-South, South and Austral macro-zones to decentralize and facilitate the administration of the Ministry of Sciences, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation. Based on this organization, the distribution of public and private Transplantation Centers is shown, highlighting the absence of this service in the extreme zones of Chile and the concentration of them in the Metropolitan Region (located in the Central macro-zone). Image created using elements from , licensed under Free Content License. To date, Chile has contributed to Transplantation research driven by universities and by public and private health centers. The current funding system is recognized as one of the main limitations for the growth of this discipline, together with the geographic distribution of the Transplantation units along the country. In 1967, the “Consejo Nacional para la Investigación y Tecnología” (CONICYT) was created, an entity that by 2017 had 13 programs to fund i